Whispered Words
by apisci
Summary: What if Sirius had thought about Harry just a bit more before turning his mind to revenge on the day of his orphaning? Will be exploring Harry in a much darker light, with a broken sense of trust, a sharper mind and a helluva lot of sceptism. Eventual Harry/Voldemort
1. 1 Responsibility

**A/N **Just so you know.. this is my first fanfic (be kind to me!) :) Reviews and _constructive_ criticism would be appreciated, but just knowing someone's read my writing is a reward in itself.

**D****isclaimer:** I don't own anything you recognise.. that's all JKR (I'm still working on it though!)

_'Parseltongue'_

_Mind/memory speech_

* * *

**Whispered Words**

**1. Responsibility**

Sirius turned around to once again face the scene of absolute devastation caused by the dark lord's visit, a visit that the sleeping bundle in his arms had somehow survived. He blinked back tears as he lightly traced the lightning shaped mark across the boy's forehead, one that he would now live with forever, serving as a reminder of the best moment in wizarding history, and the child's worst: the day he lost his parents. Sirius' whispered words fell on deaf ears as he apparated away from the destruction, the memories.

He appeared in front of a muggle orphanage, one he had ran away to as a child of eight, and rapped harshly on the door, momentarily forgetting the now half woken babe in his other arm. The response was fairly quick, considering the lateness of the hour, and a tired looking middle aged woman appeared in the doorway. She stood there for a moment in shock as she took in the sight before her.

"Stephen?" she asked, more than a little confused.

"Look, there's no time to explain, there's something that I need to do," the woman felt her heartbeat quicken at the malice in those eyes before it faltered, seeming hesitant, "and I... need you to look after him for the night, I... I don't want him to see."

The woman finally recognised there was a figure in the blankets and looked up to Sirius, raising an eyebrow. She'd heard this kind of story before.

"He's not mine!" said Sirius abruptly, mistaking her expression, before casting a sorrowful gaze at the child, smiling a bit when he grabbed and held onto his finger, "But he's as good as," saying this more to the child than her, before looking back up, "and it really is only for the night. I'll come back in the morning. I promise."

The last was said with so much earnest that the woman went against her better judgement and believed him. The softening of her eyes was all that was needed for Sirius to suddenly thrust the babe into her arms, eliciting a yelp, before resolutely turning away and rushing off into the night.

"Wait!" shouted the woman, still mildly surprised, "You haven't even given me a name!"

Sirius stopped midstride and cast a broken look over his shoulder, voice cracking as he said it, "Harry James Potter ," before disappearing off into the night. He would avenge them, his best friends, the boy's parents.

_I'm sorry pup._

x ~ x ~ x

"Harry!" came and annoyed female shout from downstairs. Harry himself was in his room, plotting a suitable punishment for his soon to be former bully, Andrew Coleson. The boy was nothing but a thug, and Harry had finally snapped when he had set fire to his meagre collection of books, mostly about history.

_Go away, _ten year old Harry thought and waited, hoping she'd give up and call on someone else to do whatever it was she wanted.

"Now!" slightly more forced. Harry stood up reluctantly and stared at the ceiling, praying that Andrew or his set of bullies hadn't set him up _again _before heading towards the stairwell.

He entered what served as the dining room and was greeted by a stream of mild profanities by three older boys, as well as a punch to the stomach when Claire, the housemistress, was berating the use of language. The boy who hit him in the stomach, Peter, crowded Harry's doubled over form.

"Freak," he said, before smirking and moving away.

Harry hated that word. Hated Peter, hated Andrew, who was now pulling faces at him as he was getting told off. But most of all, he hated this place. He looked at each of the boys in turn, standing back up to full height, hoping he delivered a glare that promised revenge.

When Claire finished, all four boys ran out of the room, leaving only him.

"Harry," Harry tensed as he felt a familiar rush of déjà vu, how many times had this happened in the past month? He inwardly cursed Andrew, again.

"What... is this?!" she shouted at him, producing a smallish brown rat, face turning livid, "and _why_ was it in the fridge?"

The first question was rhetorical and she probably didn't want an answer for the second, but Harry was fed up so he answered anyway. "That," he said slowly, as if speaking to an idiot, "is a rat, a dead one at that, and it was probably in the fridge to keep it cold."

Claire's eyes bulged. This would be the third time Harry had crossed the line this week, and considering it was already Tuesday, that was pretty good going.

"You are the most arrogant, idiotic and _repulsive_ child I have ever come across in my life!" she took a moment to calm down, noting the stoic stare the boy was giving the table behind her, "you'll do all the washing up for today and tomorrow as well as cleaning the kitchen and the bathroom."

She had turned to walk away when Harry finally protested, "But.." he squirmed a bit under her levelled gaze before deflating, "okay."

Harry watched her back dazedly, the insults didn't hurt anymore, the punishments didn't matter, he thought to himself over and over, desperately trying to stop the tears from forming and the injustice to form into thought. _But tomorrow is my birthday._

Harry ran to his room, barely noticing Andrew and Peter's name-calling all the way up the stairs, so he could breakdown in private. He promised himself he would not cry, and he very nearly didn't.

x ~ x ~ x

_I'm sorry pup._

x ~ x ~ x

Harry stopped scrubbing the toilet bowl, took off his gloves and sat red faced on the edge of the bath. He released a long sigh and once again thought about his nightmare; screaming, a green flash of light and three whispered words.

"Harry!" Claire's firm voice from downstairs set an already irate Harry on edge.

He immediately forgot all about nightmares and angrily picked up the gloves, bleach, brushes and other cleaning items and stormed down the stairs and into the dining room, speaking before the woman had the chance to open her mouth.

"Before you accuse me of anything consider that I've just spent the last three hours cleaning the kitchen _and _the bathroom on the day _you_ chose to be my birthday!" Harry looked at the items in his hands before looking up at the shocked woman's face, she'd forgotten, Harry realised angrily. He saw red_,_ "thank you very much for _remembering, _I appreciate the gesture,but you can take your presents back!"

With that, he threw the bottles, dirty sponges and gloves at her feet, angrily enough that the bottles exploded on contact, covering her with a mixture of various cleaning detergents and dirty water. She looked angrily at Harry, who was still breathing heavily, before thinking better of it and looking to a point past his left shoulder.

"Take him, just take him. You won't want him, he's a hopeless case, but just TAKE HIM!" those last words were nearly a shout before she exited the room. Harry felt his face go white as his righteous anger rushed out of him. He unclenched his fists and felt his shoulders sag as he realised that she wasn't about to tell him off for some prank he didn't commit, rather, she was going to introduce him to somebody; fat chance of that happening again. His heart sank as he saw the door close on his freedom from this place. Still, he couldn't resist turning around and looking at what could have been his, masochist that he was. He was slightly shocked to come face to face with a stern looking slightly older woman dressed in very strange clothes.

"Mr. Potter," came the clipped voice, "what I have just witnessed bears no consequence to what I am about to say. But it shall be remembered and not tolerated again."

That definitely made Harry pay attention, maybe the door was about to open again. He nodded, as the woman seemed to be waiting for a response. Satisfied, she pulled out a short stick and waved it a couple of times, but started talking before Harry had the chance to be confused.

"Mr. Potter, my name is Professor McGonagall and I am pleased to meet you," Harry thought she looked anything but pleased, but listened anyway, "I teach the subject of Transfiguration and am deputy headmistress of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Yes, magic does exist Mr. Potter and you can control it. Yes, Mr. Potter, you are something very special indeed, and I'm here to invite you to come live and study at this school."

Harry had to admit, it was a pretty good act, she had even worn a long green coat to go with it. But that's all it was, all it could be. An act. Harry couldn't help it, he snorted, wondering who could possibly have set this up.

"Look, _Professor_, I'm not going to fall for it, so stop trying now," the wind seemed to have rushed out of him as he spoke next, " It's pathetic you know; who's convinced you to come here and say all of this to me? Was it Andrew, or Peter? How can you, who has no idea what it's like to live like this, come here to play on what every child here wants most in the world? That's just cruel."

McGonagall was slightly taken aback by Harry's scalding response, and his sincerity almost had her bowing her head in shame and apology before she remembered she had committed no such wrong. There was only one problem: Harry Potter was not convinced. She held up her hand for quiet and her natural authority stopped the boy's next words.

"I'm sorry, that was definitely not my intention Mr. Potter. But my point still stands," she held his gaze for a moment, making sure he was calmer, and listening, "Have you ever noticed strange things happening around you, impossible things, things you can't explain?"

Harry reluctantly cast his mind back to barely a minute earlier: he hadn't thrown the bottles with that much force, he couldn't explain why they smashed, and why nothing had splashed onto him. Then there was the time that Andrew had given his shoes to a dog on the way home from school. He had put them in his bag afterwards and walked back barefoot, ashen faced, all the while dreading explaining that he needed new ones, only to find that by the time he had got back they were as good as new. There were countless of other times too, that he had just dismissed the incidents as 'odd'.

McGonagall smiled as she saw the cogs turning in the child's mind, remembering each and every strange occurrence in the past few years. She was so intently staring at the child's face that she almost missed the calculating look he was giving her.

"I don't believe you," he said coldly, wary of being messed around, "Prove it." He watched her sigh inwardly, now she would be stuck. But she again plucked the stick out of her sleeve and, incredulously, Harry watched her swish it at one of the gloves on the floor. He watched it shrivel up, turn into a squirrel and jump up to the dining table. Another swish had it turned into a candlestick, then a robin that flew over and perched on Harry's shoulder. He looked at it in wonder before facing the professor.

"You can teach me how to do that?" he asked tentatively, still a bit disbelieving.

McGonagall smiled knowingly, "and much, much more," she agreed.

Harry looked solemnly up at the professor; this was truly, his great escape from this world, just as he'd always wished for. He wasn't about to screw that up.

"Professor," he said politely, "I apologise for my behaviour and I would like to join your school."

x ~ x ~ x

It took all of Harry's self control to stop his jaw dropping at the sight of so much gold in front of him. The next revelation broke that control completely; this was all _his_.

"I'd suggest you take about 200 Galleons." Professor McGonagall said helpfully from beside him, "the gold ones," she said hesitantly, noticing Harry's uncomprehending look.

Shrugging to himself, he took out that figure, and a bit more on the side. The professor raised her eyebrow but didn't say anything as he made his way back to the cart. The ride back to the surface was just as terrifying as the ride down had been and Harry couldn't help but glare evilly at their goblin escort who, contrary to both humans, seemed perfectly steady on his feet afterwards.

"Would you like any help with shopping for you school supplies?" asked the professor.

Harry considered, he had a piece of parchment in his hand with everything he would need for the year written upon it, and even a few shop names to get the items from, and quite frankly, he was getting annoyed with the overbearing woman by his side.

"No thank you, I should be fine." He nodded politely. McGonagall did a double take, not expecting that answer from the boy. Nevertheless, she acquiesced to his wishes, let the boy have his freedom, it was probably the first time he had been allowed any, she reflected.

"Very well, remember to stay in this alley _only_. I'll meet you back in the Leaky Cauldron no later than five thirty understand?"

Harry nodded, eager to be off and explore.

"Be safe."

Harry nodded once again, and then watched her leave Gringotts.

First thing was first, thought Harry, as he turned around and walked back over to a counter, he had to check how much, exactly, he owned.

"Excuse me?" he asked as confidently as he could, being unable to peer over the infernally high desk, he hoped he would put on a considerable growth spurt in the near future.

"Yes?" came a drawn out reply after a small pause.

Harry stood a little straighter as an ugly head appeared over the marble surface of the desk, he tried his best to put the strangeness of this world to the back of his mind, "I would like to talk to somebody about my account."

The goblin inspected him slowly, causing the hairs on the back of his neck to stand up on end. The goblin then deigned him with a condescending look. "You can ask for that by owl," he said finally.

Harry didn't know what that meant, so he continued along the same line, hoping he didn't sound foolish, "I would much prefer to talk to someone." He hoped that he sounded stronger than he felt.

"Very well, key please," the goblin demanded after a pause, holding out his hand. Harry gave it over and felt rising panic as long moments passed without the goblin making his presence known.

"Mr. Harry Potter, this way sir," came a voice from behind him, a bit politer. Harry inwardly sighed in relief as he turned to see the new goblin ushering him towards a set of ornate double doors across from the entrance. Harry fell into step behind the creature, wondering if this had been such a good idea after all.

They entered a modestly sized room, bare of any personal ornamentation, but filled with the same atmosphere and casual wealth of the main lobby. "Take a seat, Mr. Potter."

Harry looked around and sat in one of two chairs closest to the door, it was ornate and seemed to dwarf him, he shifted uncomfortably on the edge of his seat. The goblin sat opposite him, a desk between them.

"My name is Griphook, I am the one that your father, James Potter, entrusted with his, now yours, accounts," he said formally. Harry thought that this was the nicest goblin he had met so far, and nodded in understanding.

"I'm Ha-"

"I'm sure that most people in this world know your name and your story Mr. Potter," Griphook cut in quickly. Harry had noted this disturbing fact also when McGonagall had accidently let his name slip to the barkeep in the Leaky Cauldron, and he wanted to know why those people had made an uproar at his appearance.

"Why is that?" he asked, before Griphook could continue.

Griphook blinked at him, "Because you are the boy-who-lived," he stated simply.

"The what?"

There was another pause as Griphook came to terms with the question, "The only person to have ever survived the killing curse, by the vaults! You bought about the fall of the dark lord, he-who-must-not-be-named."

"Am I right in guessing a killing curse does what it says on the tin?" Harry asked half-heartedly, "Is that why my parents abandoned me?"

Griphook spluttered, "James and Lily Potter died the night of that attack Mr. Potter, they wouldn't have abandoned you for the world."

As Harry opened his mouth to ask another question Griphook put up a hand, much like the professor had earlier, to signal silence, looking profusely uncomfortable, "Perhaps I am not the best person to explain all of this to you. What did you want concerning your accounts?"

The abrupt change in topic had Harry's mind reeling for a second before he tightly reigned in his curiosity and, in a roundabout way, asked for a written breakdown of his estate. Griphook nodded, more at ease with the more common request. He placed Harry's key in the top left corner of a piece of blank parchment and mumbled some strange language, then, in front of his eyes, the parchment filled with figures and words. The parchment was then handed over to Harry, who scanned it quickly.

"Sir? What's a galleon?" he asked, shifting in embarrassment. Griphook stared at the ten year old in disbelief before launching into a full explanation of wizarding currency and Harry's estate.

Half an hour later Harry emerged from Gringotts a little light headed, but armed with a lot more knowledge about the wizarding world than he had before. His head was still giddy from learning that he owned _houses. _Plural. Not one, but many spread mostly across England, but with some further afield throughout Europe.

With a new found confidence he walked down the alley, ignoring the stares from not wearing the strange robes everyone else did, that would be corrected shortly, and walked into Madam Malkin's Robes for All Occasions.

The seamstress made quick work of outfitting Harry for the year at Hogwarts and had happily helped him choose a robe to wear whilst not at school. "Would you like to wear the blue one now?" Madam Malkin asked kindly, understanding the purpose behind the purchase and casting a disgusted look at Harry's old muggle clothes. Harry smiled at her; she was a nice lady with a keen mind.

"That would be wonderful."

"That would be 42 galleons, two sickles and four knuts please," she smiled at him. Harry placed the stack of coins on the counter, he had also bought a featherweight, magically expanding money purse from her as well. He was glad he had too; Gringotts had given him a plain old pouch.

The woman bound and wrapped his new clothes and placed them in a handled box with the same charm as the pouch so Harry could carry it.

Harry emerged in a royal blue attire, with a trim of silver tipped black fur. He then floated around the alley first collecting everything he would need for the year before seeing how much money he had left over. A little over 50 galleons, but he had spent a little more in the book store than he probably should have done, if not for the featherweight charm he could very well imagine himself dragging around his shopping on the ground.

He was standing outside Ollivander's, a little shudder went through him as he remembered the strange episode in the store. He hoped he never needed a new wand: that man was just creepy. He looked over to a store front that was completely full of owls and remembered, with a jolt, that he had forgotten to buy a familiar. He looked down at his purse and hoped that familiars didn't cost too much.

The shop somehow managed to maintain a dingy atmosphere, despite the large amount of light that was let in through the windows. Harry looked around, not really sure what he was meant to be looking for.

"Welcome to the Magical Menagerie! What can I do ye for?" a cheerfully gruff voice asked from behind Harry, who jumped at the sudden sound.

The voice chuckled, and Harry turned to see it was a red faced middle aged man. "I... err... I'm looking for a familiar," he said uncertainly.

The man beamed, "muggleborn are ye? Not to worry! I'll give yer a quick tour!"

Harry didn't know what a 'muggleborn' was, so he just nodded and while he appreciated the kindness, the man was needlessly boisterous, which nearly made him decline his offer.

Not that he was given the chance.

If Griphook had launched into an explanation earlier, then this man full on catapulted himself into one, Harry barely had time to listen as he was whirled around various tanks and cages.

"Toads aren't really useful for much and they run away more often than not, but they're small and low maint'nce," the man smiled conspiratorially at Harry, "not teh mention cheap." Obviously he thought that Harry must not have much money on him, a fact that Harry wondered over himself. Would he be able to afford even a toad without making another trip to Gringotts?

"These here cats make for marvellous companions, they'd be hardly no maint'nce if they didn't like primpin' so often!" the man smiled at the cats in the line affectionately, introducing Harry to each and every one of them. "Last up is yer owls, best familiars in the world if you be asking me!" he said proudly.

This time he managed an astounded, "They're beautiful," before he was being looked over and pecked in greeting whilst having the many benefits of having an owl recited to him. He stopped by a snowy owl that seemed to gaze through him. This was the one.

"How much for this one?" he asked boldly.

The man was mid sentence and it took him a moment to clarify which bird Harry was looking at, he smiled when he noticed, "She's a real beauty that one, all high'n'mighty though, never deigns to notice anybody. She's yours for 30 galleons, cage an' all."

"Done."

Harry was just leaving the counter when he heard a strange silky voice from a corner

_'Humanss. Alwayss the ssame, alwayss the night-hunterss and mouse-chaserss, never the mighty sserpent.' _

_'Maybe not thiss one Chiana, see, it comes.'_

Harry peeked into the glass tank in the corner and felt his eyes widen in surprise when two snakes bobbed their heads up and down, inspecting him, tongues flickering out, forgetting the glass between them. Harry felt a desire to possess that he'd never felt before.

_'Bah! It'ss just a boy.'_

_'Shusshh Chiana, I think thiss one is worthy.'_

Harry looked around immediately to the shopkeeper, who was eying him strangely, "How much for two snakes?" he asked nonchalantly.

"You're bound for Hogwarts right?" at Harry's affirmative he carried on, "they don't allow snakes there no more, you'd have to leave 'em somewhere."

Harry thought about this, so he'd just have to smuggle them in somehow, both were less than the length of his forearm though, it shouldn't be too hard. Besides, he really did want them. He plastered on a fake grin and matched the man's boisterous attitude, "it's okay, really! Mum said I could get something else as well as an owl, you know... something to keep close by at home, and these are so small! She won't mind if I get two." He looked, in what he hoped was a hopeful manner, at the man.

"Okay fine! Tell her you can bring 'em right back if she don't like 'em! Ten galleons each, so 20 total."

Harry grinned and put down all his shopping again, including his new owl, who ruffled her feathers in what he supposed was an indignant manner and paid for the snakes, which were then carefully placed in a small glass container, which Harry placed in another bag so he could carry it.

"Be careful with them," the man said, suddenly serious, "snakes can get vicious for no apparent reason."

The sudden change made Harry pause in the doorway and lock eyes with the man and mutter a solemn, "I will," before heading back to the Leaky Cauldron, having completely depleted his funds, and his ability to carry any more purchases.

He would not tell McGonagall about the snakes.

* * *

**A/N **erm.. yeah.. tell me what you think if you got the time, would be much appreciated =) Is my characterisation acceptable, or just plain odd? This is quite a boring chapter really, but it sets it up nicely for the future. Just as a warning, the next chapter will have a time jump in it, I can't imagine myself happily writing through the first few years of Harry's education.

Well yeah... thanks again. I'll try get the next update up in a week max. =D

apisci


	2. 2 Finding

**A/N **So, here's the second chapter, I hope it gets as good a reception as the first! Any helpful tips and and constructive criticism would be much appreciated. Oh, and I do love it when people R&R, it makes me happy to know that people like it =)

**Disclaimer** If you recognise it... it's probably not mine. All hail the almighty JKR!

_'Parseltongue'_

_Mind speak_

* * *

**2. Finding**

Kings Cross Station was just the same as he remembered it being from a school trip a few years ago. Harry was trying desperately to keep up with McGonagall's rapid pace whilst steering a baggage trolley safely around the general masses, ignoring the irate hisses coming from the snakes wrapped around his body under his robes and the strange looks that Hedwig attracted from the muggles. He had half a mind to ask the professor to slow down, but the notion was rejected as soon as it came into his head. He could cope.

They came to a stop on platform nine and Harry tried to regain some of his breath back from the vigorous walk. Upon seeing Harry's condition the professor cast him an apologetic look, Harry pretended not to see it as he straightened up and looked around. There was no train here. Harry looked again at his ticket, "9 and ¾?" he asked, looking expectantly at the professor before she could open her mouth.

McGonagall gave a little nod towards one of the supports holding up the roof eyeing it sternly. Harry followed this nod, "Through there?" he asked incredulously, dubiously looking up and down the very solid looking wall.

"Fear not Mr. Potter, just walk straight through and you shall arrive safely on the other side. Unfortunately I will have to leave you here as I have some duties to attend to at the school," she paused to cast him a smile, but Harry was still watching the wall mistrustfully, "I'll see you at school, don't be late and have a safe and pleasant journey."

Harry felt a slight shift of air and found that, true to her word, McGonagall had disappeared from his side. He blinked at the empty space, unable to help the coil of jealousy in the pit of his stomach from forming. Magic was amazing, why had he only just found out about it now?

He avidly watched as a strangely dressed gang of redheads approached the portal to the hidden platform. He saw one of the younger ones turning his head in Harry's direction, so he tucked his head down slightly and slowly started walking further on. He disappeared behind the pillar, then stopped so he could eavesdrop on the strange family.

"You first Fred, then George, Percy and then you Ron," came the strained, tight voice of the mother of the family. Harry was amused with the twins', Fred and George's, trickery before the chatter diminished. He decided to take a peek and was startled, and vaguely humoured, by the sight of the last of the red headed boys charge straight at the wall, eyes full of fear. Then he disappeared, straight thought it.

Harry felt his heart rate increase with adrenaline. The wizarding world was mad, surely there were more, less obvious, ways into the wizarding world. What if a non-magical slipped and fell through by accident? He shook his head incredulously, waited for the rest of the family, the mother, father and young daughter to go through, then gritted his teeth and forced himself to walk through at a more dignified pace.

He gasped as he experienced something akin to having a bucket of freezing water poured over his head, emerging with more haste then he went entered. The two snakes he had hiding under his robes also gave a hiss of displeasure, coiling tighter around Harry's waist.

_Cold, _the female, Chiana, complained, wriggling closer still to Harry's body. Rasp, the male, was silent, as was often his way, but still snuggled closer. Harry couldn't help but stifle a chuckle.

Of course, the giant, beautiful, red steam engine in front of him also had a part in keeping him quiet. The platform itself was crowded, many more people were here than on the platform at King's Cross, and more people were appearing with loud cracks out of thin air, others were emerging from a cloud of green smoke over by what looked like rows of fireplaces. He quickly spotted the red headed family again, boisterous as they were. He also noted many other families, although they could be split into two groups: cold and stoic, or loud and boisterous. Harry felt another pang of jealousy, all the others had _family_. They all looked well taken care of, they all had a place in the world.

Harry's jealousy quickly soured further to anger. Surely with all this _magic_, these witches and wizards could have done _something_ for him. Most of these children had had access to magic their entire lives, the unfairness of it made him want to stamp his feet like a spoilt toddler.

Feeling the sudden tension in his body, Rasp cautiously poked his head of the collar of Harry's robes, _You are truly angry that they did nothing for you, didn't _save_ you?_ Harry gritted his teeth, a bit peeved that the snake had him figured out, but no less angry.

_Yes._

Chiana, who was listening in, gave a snake equivalent to a snort. _Humanss, _she started, _will do nothing for you, unless you do something for them first, and sometimes not even then. They have little honour. Little sense of bigger family._

Thinking back on his short life, Harry had to agree.

_They will fear you. Try to use you, even attempt to control you for your power. Their greed of it surpasses even that of the dwarves for gold._

Harry was startled, that was the second time Rasp had spoken to him without any prompting. At the same time, he recognised the ring of truth in those words; his companions had confirmed to him before that he was much more powerful than the average wizard. He was starting to dislike the people of this world more and more the more he heard or deduced about it. It took him a moment to realise that he was standing rather listlessly in the middle of the platform so, with a sigh, he hauled his luggage onto the train, leaving it at a luggage rack, and stumbled as an older student bustled past him without apology. He bristled with the show of discourtesy and heatedly made his way down to an empty compartment, slamming the door shut behind him.

_They will _not_ control me! _He whispered as a late reply to Rasp.

_No little one, _he hissed back, amused, _they will not._ Before slithering up and coiling loosely around Harry's neck, but still hidden from view.

Harry settled himself into the cushioned seat, carelessly throwing his legs across the seats and grabbing a book out of his expandable book bag and settling down to read it. It was on recent history in the wizarding world, Harry had stayed up for most of the night before, excited with the prospect of a new magical world, reading up on a bit of magical theory, the first few chapters of his text books and this history book. He had read over the key events in the last century or so, so he knew of his new headmaster Dumbledore's duel with infamous dark lord Grindelwald, of the man he-who-must-not-be-named and his 'merry' band of followers and, what angered him the most, his downfall. The day Harry was orphaned.

He had half a mind to close the book shut in disgust, they mentioned how Harry was the 'saviour of the wizarding world', because he had ousted the nameless man, you-know-who, but had failed to realise that a one year old child had just lost his family, or the fact that no one had seen him since. Indeed, this slightly outdated book seemed to presume that he was dead. Furthermore, as a fellow outcast, he realised the obvious bias of the book, you-know-who was mentioned as evil, cruel and even deranged, but not much else. Harry did admit that he sounded a bit mad from the accounts of his attacks, but then again, most of the children, _muggles, _he thought darkly, at the orphanage thought that he was mad himself, whilst Harry was quite sure that he was pretty rational in his thinking.

He had read about one Sirius Black's betrayal of his parents to the nameless man and the deaths that it resulted in; all at once the childish dreams of every orphan was smashed to pieces with the knowledge that he would never have a long lost parent make a claim on him. Harry was seething, hating the man that had ruined his life. In Harry's mind, Black was more to blame than the nameless man himself as he was, after all, meant to be a close family friend; with Nameless at least his parents knew where they stood. Black would pay.

A knock had Harry forgetting his thoughts and looking up at the door, and he had to stifle a groan as he recognised the vibrant red hair within the frame, "Do.. do you mind if I sit here? Everywhere else is full," the boy said as way of greeting. Harry watched him cautiously, still worked up over his understanding of the events ten years ago, he didn't want someone from such a loud family sitting anywhere near him now more than ever, but he could hardly be rude to him. Could he?

"As long as you're quiet; I've got a headache," Harry lied as a way of compromise and went back to his book. The other boy looked grateful enough as he took a seat.

"My name's Ron, Ron Weasley," he said proudly, offering his hand.

Harry was glaring at the words _Sirius Black_ on the page during the introduction, looking up after only a brief pause, "Harry Potter," he replied testily, ignoring the hand.

Ron's face paled, "_the _Harry Potter?!" he asked in a stage whisper.

Now Harry was annoyed, this boy had just ruined the quiet space that Harry had found for himself to stew and learn more about this new world, "Didn't you hear me? Or maybe you just don't believe me? Yes, I am _the _Harry Potter, the boy-who-can't-remember-his-parents!" he answered harshly before turning back to his book.

Ron blinked, surprised, before his face morphed into one of fear and embarrassment, "Sorry mate, I didn't -"

"I am not your _mate_. Just shut up and be quiet if you're going to sit here," Harry growled back aggressively, deliberately sticking his head closer into his book.

Nearly four hours in and one disturbance later, a bushy haired girl by the name of Hermione Granger, a prefect knocked on the compartment door and told the pair inside to change into their school robes. A half hour later and they were at their destination, Weasley hurried away as soon as the train had stopped. Students with glittering prefect badges ushered all the first years off the train and towards a giant of a man, both in height and girth.

"Firs' years this way! Firs' years!" game the giant's gruff voice.

Harry made sure to follow the instructions, following silently behind the group of tiny bodies in black robes, and couldn't help but gasp as the path cleared to reveal a beautiful view of a castle, the lake in front of it glistening with the reflections of both the lights in the castle and the softly glowing moon. Harry would have described it as a scene out of a story book, if he could have remembered ever having one read to him.

"- okay? No more to four to a boat!"

Harry hadn't even realised that the giant was talking, focused as he was on the beauty, but his eyes followed his future classmates as they divided themselves into groups of four and apprehensively stepped into the wooden rowing boats that lay innocently along the shoreline. Harry swallowed nervously, noting with distaste that the giant had a whole row boat to himself, before filling in the only available seat left, next to Ron Weasley.

Ron's face dropped when he stepped into the boat, and Harry sneered in return. The other two in the boat, the bushy haired Granger girl from the train, and an unknown pudgy faced boy must have felt the unease, as they remained silent for the whole journey. Harry was content to ignore them and gaze with longing at the castle, feeling as both his serpentine companions discretely poked their heads out for a look as well.

x ~ x ~ x

"Potter, Harry," McGonagall called out, and offered a tight smile by way of greeting.

Harry walked up the stone steps to the hat with only the slightest hint of nervousness of being paraded in front of the whole school. He hated crowds. Hermione Granger had been sorted into Ravenclaw, but by the way the muggleborn had recited most of _Hogwarts: A History_ on the walk to the hall he wasn't surprised. Her companion on the boat had gone to Gryffindor, and the pompous blonde haired boy he had refused to befriend on the stairs before the doors was sorted into Slytherin.

He eyed all the houses with distaste as he sat himself on the stool and the hat was placed on his head, he didn't really want much to do with any of them.

_Oh really now? Isn't that interesting?_

Harry froze, eyes going wide at the unexpectedly loud voice inside his head. _Who.. no, _what_ are you?_

He could feel an amused rumble from the enchanted hat, _A hat, obviously, now then, where to place you?_

_Do you have to 'place' me at all?_ Harry thought back, despondent but desperate.

_Of course I do, _came the reply, _but you would not do well in Hufflepuff or Gryffindor with that attitude, and out of the two, I think you would thrive more in..._

"RAVENCLAW!"

Harry's stomach lurched; he would be in the same house as loud, know-it-all Granger. But he sighed as the hat was lifted off his head and attempted a smile towards his new house, by the looks that they, namely Granger, were giving him, he needed to work on it. To be positive, at least he wasn't with the snob Malfoy, or the rowdy, judging by the family, Weasley. He sat down next to another first year boy and opposite Granger, offering a smaller smile and then sending signals that he wanted to be left alone. If there was one thing that he would never disillusion himself of, was that friends were never to be trusted, after all, his parent's were betrayed by their _best_ friend, and now they were dead.

_'What are you thinking child?' _Harry nearly jumped in surprise as he heard Rasp's voice near his ear.

_'That I will never be foolish enough believe in friends," _he whispered back, his soft hisses going completely unheard by the rest of the table.

_'That is good,' _Chiana replied, pleased, '_they only want you for your fame.'_

_'And my power,' _Harry agreed, remembering Rasp's earlier words, '_I will not let them use me.'_

"Ever," he said quietly in English, looking up and noticing the eerie twinkle in the Headmaster's eyes as he delivered his speech seemingly to Harry alone.

"Third floor corridors are out of bounds and should not be entered unless you wish to experience a very unpleasant death," the twinkle in the man's eye seemed to increase at this, as if revelling at the fate any poor unfortunate soul who wandered there. Harry shuddered, and people thought he was mad! He resolved to stay as far away from the headmaster, and his deathly corridors, as he possibly could.

There was a loud clap from the head table, and suddenly there was a variety of food stretched the whole way down the house tables with plates and cutlery appearing in front of every student. Harry's eyes near boggled at the sight of so much food in front of him. Magic was truly wonderful, as were the cooks.

The rest of the table introduced themselves to each other, Terry Boot, Granger, Michael Corner, Anthony Goldstein, Padma Patil (who's twin sister was Gryffindor) and Lisa Turpin, Harry quietly said his name and nothing more, content to listen to the others as they chattered.

Hermione was talking excitedly about the school's vast library and Harry made a mental note to visit it as soon as possible, then he wondered whether it was worth 'befriending' the bushy haired girl for her obvious enthusiasm for research. It would probably be better to wait for a week or two, to allow him to assess his housemates before deciding if any of them had any traits that he could use to his advantage. He then could consider looking to the rest of the year and possibly older students. But these plans were for the future, what he really needed to do now was master his magic, get his head down and study hard so he could be the best.

_'I will be the best,' _he whispered down to his companions.

There was a slight pause as the snakes registered the words, _'Why? What need have you to be the very _best_?' _Chiana asked, somewhat innocently.

Harry's eyes hardened and he felt his resolve strengthen as he realised his goal, _'So I can kill Sirius Black.'_

* * *

**A/N **Like it? Hate it? From here to the next chapter there's a time skip of a few years just when everything starts to get you're thinking 'why would it _ever_ happen like that?' I hope some things will make themselves clearer in the future. Sorry for the shorter update, but since you're all such lovely people I really wanted to get another chapter out for you all (It's still nearly 3000 words... =) ).

Thank you for reading!

apisci


	3. 3 Trophy

**A/N **Well, here you go. Next chapter is up! Although I really doubt I can keep up with this pace! I admit it's a little boring, but I needed to explain how things turned out with Harry over the years. The time jump does mean that I can start moving rather quickly from now on though. A big thank you and virtual hugs to everybody who's taken the time to review.

**Disclaimer** Everything you recognise.. I'd bet on it not being my own. JKR, I salute you.

_~Parseltongue~_

_'Mind speak'_

_Memory_

* * *

**3. Trophy**

Harry cursed as he ducked back behind his rock, desperately trying to think what spells in his repertoire could be considered acceptable for a slightly below average fourth year to know. The jet of fire behind him stopped and great footsteps thundered towards him. Harry cursed again, instinctively knowing that if he stayed where he was for a moment longer, he would look up to meet the eyes of a very angry, overly protective mother Hungarian Horntail.

Still cursing, he made a mad dash for the next nearest rock, then the next, then the next, allowing each one to scratch and cut him a little bit. There was booing from behind him, so Harry knew that he had done a full circle around the arena, and was standing just in front of the Hogwarts stands. He could think of at least a dozen spells that would capture, tame or injure the dragon enough for him to grab the egg. But he couldn't use them, so that everybody could, and would, underestimate him when it really mattered. So, dark spells were out.

Since learning that he needed to improve on his smile in his first year, Harry had also come to the conclusion that he should be able to master all facial expressions, as well as human behaviour. At first he had watched the icy purebloods, as they liked to call themselves, even though their blood was nowhere near pure; Harry knew, he had researched their family bloodlines back to the first millennia, and some even to the time of the founders. He had copied and eventually mastered the blank, stoic look that usually graced the older Slytherins' faces.

It quickly became apparent that, while accepted readily as the norm in Slytherin, this look was considered outlandish by the rest of the school, including Harry's house. It almost seemed that the more Harry had closed himself off, the more intrigued his housemates had become. He should have known, being a Ravenclaw himself, the thrill of unravelling a mystery. So he had devised another plan, one that had worked for him ever since the last term of that first year, it had been very effective when he was trying to gain Quirrel's trust so he could get to the stone before Voldemort. Harry had learned to act.

He was quite proud of himself for making such a step forwards, thoroughly researching a spell that would superficially lower his amount of magical power and learning spells to trick any diagnostic scans before purposely falling off his broom. He had then cast spells upon himself to make it seem as if he had sustained a serious head injury, which had somehow had a negative effect on his magic. He had played the part of the tragic case of the slightly half-witted, below average Ravenclaw ever since. Most people only looked at him in sympathy, seeing nothing but damaged goods.

The spell to alter the appearance of his magical power was taxing over a long period of time, but had become much more manageable when Harry had tied it down to a powerfully magical anklet that Luna Lovegood had gifted him during his second year. Luna had almost seen right through Harry, recognising an act, but thankfully unable to see any further, the girl was truly amazing and, whilst she was considered a bit odd, the 'junk' that she made was actually rather magically powerful.

Harry wasn't too worried about her revealing him to the world, everybody thought Luna was a little crazy, due to her mother's untimely death, and adult wizards tended to believe what they thought they were observing, which is why Harry hadn't get been discovered, and you'd have to crack through that stubbornness to get them to see sense. Not one of them would believe in Loony Lovegood.

The rock Harry was leaning against split in two as a heavy tail smashed into its side. Harry quickly whipped around, wand in front of him before remembering his act and, berating himself as he did so for being lost in his thoughts, cast a few weak stunners at the dragon in what he hoped looked like a desperate attempt, but missing on purpose of course.

He had considered just asking the female dragon to stop, very politely, in parseltongue; Chiana had claimed that dragons generally spoke a higher form of serpentine language, but could still understand the tongue of their distant cousins. So asking the dragon to stop to let Harry explain the situation would have been a very favourable idea, apart from nobody knew he was a parseltongue, and Harry wanted to keep it that way.

An epiphany came to Harry, and he thanked the spirit of Rowena Ravenclaw for sharpening his mind; after all, whilst accidental magic at such an age wasn't exactly common, it wasn't completely _unheard_ of, and it seemed to be a perfect way out of this tight little spot that Dumbledore had placed him in.

'_Do it,' _came Chiana's voice inside his head causing Harry to jump, unused to the snake's new skill. _'It's not new, I've been able to do this for a week.'_

'_Yes yes, ever since you reached your majority,' _Harry thought back fondly, bemused with Chiana's childlike indignation.

_~Watch out!~_ Rasp's voice called out urgently, causing Harry to twirl around to face the dragon once again. He widened his eyes almost comically with affected fear, whilst behind the mask, Harry was suppressing a grin. This was perfect! It was this kind of desperate situation that triggered accidental magic. He waited just a fraction longer, until the dragon's open jaw was closing around his upper body, before barely moving his wand that was sitting loosely in his seemingly limp hand.

Suddenly silver flames shot up around Harry, forming a barrier and obscuring him from view, whilst a flowing image of a giant silver eagle with piercing blue eyes, about six metres tall, with a thin tendril of silver fire connecting it back to Harry's shield. The dragon reared back and he smirked as he freely moved his wand within his shield which, whilst opaque on the outside, allowed Harry to see out. He commanded his apparition to dive at the dragon in what he hoped was a bird-like manner, clawing and pecking and leaving searing burns wherever the flames made contact with the dragonhide.

The Horntail roared at the new threat, completely forgetting about the boy who was now concentrating on keeping his bird just out of range of the chain the dragon was attached to. The great muscles of the magical creature was straining against the links, seeing this Harry made the eagle dive and swerve past the dragon, leaving more burn marks on the dragon's haunches before looping quickly around the dragon's head and flitting underneath the answering burst of dragonfire.

Harry flicked his wand aggressively towards the castle, commanding the bird to fly in that direction and ingraining orders to keep away from the arena before relinquishing his control of it. The dragon reared and lunged towards its escaping antagonist, breaking the chains and launching herself up into the sky, narrowly missing some of the stands and not hearing the terrified screams of the students within them.

By the time the shield had dropped, when the thin tendril of connecting magic had snapped, Harry was once again wearing the face of a slightly confused low achieving Ravenclaw. He sheepishly picked up his wand from the ground beside him, which he had dropped just before the shield had gone, and looked fearfully around the arena, up at the sky, and then quickly down to his feet, partly to hide his smirk. They all looked so shocked.

Only then did he seem to remember the purpose of the challenge and started to walk overcautiously towards the great mound of dragon eggs, pausing before clambering up to the top. He slowly increased his pace and ended up stumbling quite a bit near the summit in his apparent haste to finish the task and get out of the arena. Inside he wasn't worried one whit, he had given his eagle enough magic to sustain acrobatic flight for at least another five minutes. Nevertheless, he made a show of sighing in relief as he picked up the golden egg, looking up with a daft smile towards the table of judges.

To his great annoyance, Dumbledore seemed to be chuckling to himself, nodding smugly in Harry's direction when he noticed the stare. Harry hid his disgust, realising his mistake in using such an obvious large amount of magic and showing no signs of exhaustion. Now _Dumbledore_ _knew_ that Harry was magically powerful, which was almost as bad as knowing that Harry could control it. He hurried towards the exit, casting a worried glance up at the sky to legitimise his haste.

'_Can you not just pass it off as adrenaline?'_ Chiana asked, making Harry shake his head slightly.

_'Too much magic for that,' _Harry sighed._ 'I was careless, I didn't think, and now I'll have to try and fix this mess,'_ he replied back testily, walking into a tent entrance.

He was only given a moment to himself in the medi-tent, and he used it to banish the frustration from his face and reconstruct his blank mask, layering his other persona over the top of it.

_~I could just bite him for you, ~_ Chiana offered in what she probably thought was a helpful manner.

_~And what would that achieve? One dead headmaster and a lot more suspicion. And you,~ _Rasp turned to Harry, eyes ablaze, ~_you forgot yourself and played right into his trap, you let him control your actions and betray yourself. You deserve the hassle.~ _The snake then angrily dropped out of Harry's robes and headed in the general direction of the forbidden forest. Whilst Chiana had grown to nearly a metre in length, Rasp had remained as petite as he was the day Harry had bought him and had darkened to a dark brown muddy colour, dull in comparison to Chiana's ethereal silver body that was still wrapped around Harry.

Harry shifted uncomfortably as he watched the snake leave him. _'He will come back,' _Chiana assured him, _'Just wait and see.'_

_'I know he will, that's not why I'm upset though,'_ Harry replied unhappily.

_'He only wants the best for you, he's probably more upset with himself' _came Chiana's surprisingly insightful reassurance, catching Harry off balance, not that his companion noticed.

The sight of a bustling older woman caused the conversation to be put on hold, "Oh you poor dear!" Madam Pomfrey crooned as she caught sight of Harry. She put a guiding arm around his shoulder and pushed him towards a separate section of the tent which contained four beds for four champions, each separated by white sheets. She insisted he lay on the only available bed left and promptly started fussing over every cut and bruise he had so carefully sustained during the task.

"What was Albus thinking? Allowing you to participate in such dangerous games! Surely he could have done something for you, we already had a champion after all!" Harry had an uncharacteristic soft spot for the healer, she would have been brilliant if she wasn't so easily manipulated. She was completely unbiased to any house and was very good at her job, her down to earth attitude and openness was often like a breath of fresh air and a welcome change to Harry. He even considered the hospital wing as something akin to a sanctuary at the school. But his mind turned dark at her words.

Dumbledore, ever since the fiasco with the troll at Halloween during his first year, which Harry had killed by levitating and dropping a transfigured club (in the form of a giant needle) onto its head and rescuing Granger in the process, he had tried his absolute best to stay away from the meddlesome headmaster as much as possible. He had repeatedly set traps for the insecure youngest Weasley male who, in his thirst to prove himself coupled with his idiocy, had fallen for each and every one of them, leading himself and his two friends, Seamus Finnigan and Dean Thomas into deadly situations. Forcing them to face the horrors of the third floor corridor in their first year when it became apparent that Quirrel just couldn't be won over. While he didn't think that he hated him, Harry still didn't fancy the idea of Voldemort returning to life.

Sometime through second year, Weasley had befriended Hermione. Harry hadn't really considered losing Hermione as a major blow at the time, but he was finding more and more that he could do with the girl's genius in researching, although it had forced him to become good at it on his own.

Harry would have been content to do nothing as the rumours about the mythical Chamber of Secrets started bounding around the school if not for Chiana's insistence to find it. That had been the first and only time Chiana and Rasp had ever had such a heated argument, and Harry had hated playing peacemaker between the two of them. He had finally compromised, satisfying both parties by once again setting up Weasley and his cohort, gently pushing Hermione towards a certain book and guiding her to the right conclusion with a series of carefully planned innocent phrases that led Ron, Dean and Seamus to the second floor girls bathroom, along with an uncomfortable Professor Lockhart, Harry was amused to see. He was content to let Weasley's desperation to save his sister drive them forwards, sending Chiana along with the four of them to open up the way.

She had returned in the early hours of the next morning, full of stories about how Weasley and Seamus had been separated from the others, about the magnificent chamber and then the so called 'memory' of Tom Riddle. She had shuddered in fear at the memory of the giant basilisk that was half mad with isolation and drooped in sadness as she recounted how Dumbledore's phoenix, Fawkes, had delivered the sword of Gryffindor to Weasley and then pecked out the basilisk's eyes. Chiana had finished with a vengeful _'He killed her,' _before disappearing for a week.

During Harry's third year, Dumbledore had thought it prudent to hire a werewolf for the role of Defence Against the Dark Arts. This time, Harry had firmly stayed out of the problems that ensued, despite the creature's continued attempts to befriend Harry. It was also obvious that Lupin and Professor Snape had some kind of history from the glares they gave each other in the hallways. Harry had then researched the two of them from their school days, surprised to find they had been in the same year and finding out more about his father and his _best_ friend Sirius Black in the process. The four of them had been pranksters, he had gotten additional information about them through the portraits. What he heard caused him to hate Sirius Black even more, as well as his father and the other two from the group of 'Marauders'. Towards the end of the year, Harry had gotten so annoyed with Lupin that he had 'accidentally' let slip that he was a werewolf. The post of Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher was open once again soon after.

For the past three years he had been successful in hiding his power from the headmaster, despite the near endless calls to the headmaster's office to discuss the responsibilities and repercussions of being the boy-who-lived, which ended up being exhausting battle of wits more often than not, not once had Harry given himself away, he hadn't slipped up _once_. But now the meddlesome man had finally found a way to corner Harry into either showing his talents or dying. Damn Tri-Wizard Tournament, he was almost certain that Dumbledore had set it up so Harry's name would be called out. A direct challenge, and a risky thing to do, which meant only one thing: Dumbledore was running out of patience.

Harry smiled grimly at the flustered woman, "He said there wasn't anything else he could do. It's not his fault, I'm actually quite grateful that he tried in the first place," he said with as much innocence as his dark emotions would allow him at that moment.

It worked, Madam Pomfrey sighed, eyes shining with unshed tears at his show of bravery, cupping his chin with one hand and rubbing her thumb comfortingly against his cheek, "You're such a good boy," she said with a slight hiccup. Harry grinned innocently up at her, inwardly retching at the foppish way he was acting.

Madam Pomfrey seemed to recover herself, snatching her hand away and coughing to clear her throat, blinking her eyes rapidly, "Go on you scallywag! See how well you did, you're perfectly fine now!" she said, shooing him away with quick hands and turning around to set about tending to her other patients.

" – six and a seven! Making a grand total of 27 points for our youngest contender, putting him in last place!" came the booming announcement over the stands. Harry smiled, pleased with himself, there were six points between him and Fleur. He supposed he had made the audience bored enough by simply running away from the dragon for the first ten minutes of the challenge.

He allowed himself a small grin before walking back towards the castle, intent on reaching it before the masses.

x ~ x ~ x

It was well past midnight, but Harry wasn't tired at all, using the first task as an excuse to fall asleep as soon as he got back. He had fallen asleep at six in the evening, waking up at eleven to go on an evening trip to the restricted section of the library, having already read all of the interesting books in the main sections.

He quietly cast a disillusionment charm on himself before exiting from his curtained bed, already fully dressed in a set of casual slate blue robes. He also cast spells to muffle his footsteps and breathing as well as the rustle of his robes, and a grey spell that hid his magical aura and detected others, and another to allow him to see in the dark.

Sure that all his spells were in place, Harry crept silently out of the dormitory, leaving Chiana to snuggle into the warmth that Harry had just abandoned, and checked that the common room was empty before strolling though it and out the entranceway. He made sure to check every corridor before entering it, he wasn't invisible after all; if someone looked directly at him he could do nothing less than obliviate the unfortunate to save the situation, and there was a classic example of a spell that left traces. The memory charms that he would have preferred were all dark, and would be detected by the wards on the school. So he would just have to be careful and live with the painfully slow progress.

"We haven't even _found _that one yet! How can you know it's blocked?" came a slightly frustrated male voice. Harry froze in place, concentrating on sound alone in order to determine the direction and the distance of the voice: ahead of him, just about the turn the corner into his corridor. He looked around, searching for a dark alcove or anywhere similar to hide him from sight.

"I don't, but all the others around here are!" came a louder voice, similar in pitch and emphasis.

"It's not a waste of time! What if we can use it?" the first voice replied. Harry ducked into a slightly shadowed area, it wasn't ideal, but it was the only place not bathed in light in the corridor, the approaching pair would have to really look in order to see him due to the disillusionment charm anyway.

"Wait!" said the second voice, "look at the map! Someone's close... Harry Potter. Around the next corner!"

Harry's breathing hitched, there was no way that they could know that it was _him_, they hadn't even known he was there until a few seconds ago! Another few questions were raise: what map? Found what? The map must be how they knew. All too slowly he realised that it would only take the pair the few seconds he had just wasted for them to find him. He was jolted out of his thoughts by a hand on each shoulder.

"Well now, what do we have here then Fred?" Harry turned to the speaker, eyes widening when he saw a body that he hadn't noticed before.

"Well George, I'd say it was a little lost Ravenclaw," replied Fred jovially.

"I'd have to agree with you there Fred, but the real question is –"

"How does a tragically slow-witted fourth year Ravenclaw –"

"Know how to cast –"

"A disillusionment charm?" Fred finished off, boggling Harry's mind enough that the confused expression he wore was not entirely fake.

"I –" Harry started, before thinking better, "who are you?"

"Aww, well now, isn't that just adorable?" teased George.

"We, are the great –"

"the mighty –"

"not to mention handsome,"

"Weasley twins!" both of them finished with a flurry.

"Now then, what's a simple one like you doing out at this time of night wearing a high level spell?" asked Fred, or George, Harry wasn't entirely sure which.

"Unless you're not really simple," said the other.

"I – I wanted to go for a walk," Harry winced, it was a very weak excuse, so he decided to drop the act altogether before the twins could begin to rip into it, he would review and fix the performance at a later time, "what map has the power to tell you who I am and where I'm at?" It would, after all, be a very useful tool, a map that showed you where everybody was.

This caused the twins to pause, "Well, I... err.. Ahem, why the Marauder's map of course!"

Harry felt his heart skip a beat as he recognised the name, "Marauder's?" he asked breathlessly, feeling a need to possess an object that his father had owned, even if he had been a fool.

Fred and George shared an uncertain look, "Yeah, we owe those guys a lot. And you can drop the act by the way, it's obvious that you're actually quite sharp."

Harry looked them both over in a calculating manner, deciding that it couldn't hurt, "The Marauders," he began, "were a group of four schoolboy friends."

"We know, Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot and Prongs," one of the twins said quickly, obviously not wanting a lecture. This caused Harry to pause; it was a small comfort to know that his father was at least smart enough to not give away his identity so freely. Moony was obviously the werewolf, but he had no idea to whom the other nicknames were assigned.

"Remus Lupin, Peter Pettigrew, Sirius Black," a subconscious small growl escaped his lips at the betrayer's name, "and James Potter," he finished in a whisper. There was a short silence as his words sank in.

"Potter?" one of the twins repeated to the other, "and to think we found it just lying around in Filch's office!"

Harry looked up sharply, giving them both a dark smile, "Yes. Potter. Which, of course, means that this map that you have so carefully recovered and looked after, is actually _mine, _and, as decent wizarding folk, the only proper thing you can do is return it to its rightful owner. Or," he shrugged, "we could duel for it."

"Woah, hey, hey my friend," said one of them, slinging an arm around Harry's shoulder, "no need to get so hasty. As you said, _we_ got the map back, so you can see why we'd be rather... reluctant, to just hand it over."

Harry didn't comment, thinking wistfully how much simpler this would be if he could use Chiana or Rasp to intimidate the other boys into agreeing, and slowly moved his eyes towards the arm that was slung across his shoulders, reaching for his wand at the same time. "Or, you can hand it over now and head merrily back to your tower in the knowledge that nothing _damaging_ will happen to either of you."

The twins narrowed their eyes at him simultaneously, it would have been unnerving if they weren't still so flustered with Harry's change in attitude. Harry smiled inwardly, knowing that being presented with something other than you expected would put anybody off balance. "Damaging? Your precious reputation as the pitiful, heart-of-gold Ravenclaw that you've built up over the years won't allow you to harm us."

Harry mentally scoffed at this reasoning, but also saw what he was looking for: the twin that wasn't speaking was subconsciously protectively stroking a seemingly blank piece of parchment. That must be the map. Harry's smile deepened, eyes flashing with mirth, "I didn't say anything about causing you _physical_ harm."

With that, he suddenly sprang into action, jolting towards the twin holding the parchment, one hand slipped the sheaf out of the limp hand whilst the other, holding his wand, pointed straight at the same twin's head.

"_Legilimens,"_ he hissed, diving into the alien mind. He didn't have much time, the other twin, who he now knew to be Fred, would surely interrupt his spell once he had recovered from his shock. So he quickly sifted through and discarded memories of George's childhood, growing up with his twin, of the two pranking family, friends and each other. Harry was glad he had thought it prudent to spend some time practicing the act of mind reading in the backalleys surrounding Diagon and Knockturne Alley, as he found what he was looking for with relative ease.

_Harry was standing beside the twins as they activated the map earlier that evening. George took out his wand and pointed it at the blank parchment. "I solemnly swear I am up to no good," he whispered, almost reverently tapping his wand against the paper, and suddenly, ink began spreading from the folds, forming a black and white floor plan of the school, with labelled moving black dots upon it. The twins grinned at each other._

_"Where to?"_

Harry made a mental note of the phrase before quickly discarding the memory and skipping to an earlier one, this took slightly longer to find as he wasn't entirely sure what he was looking for.

_Fred and George were running down a hallway, Harry recognised it as the one just off the Gryffindor tower. They stopped just short of a portrait of a voluptuous lady who was admiring herself rather vainly in a handheld mirror. Fred took a deep calming breath and took out his wand, eyes still glistening with tears of laughter._

_"Mischief mana – "_

Harry grunted as he hit the floor, blinking as his mind recovered from leaving a mindscape with such haste, he had gotten what he needed. He still had the map in his hand, and George was clutching his head in agony.

Fred looked fearfully towards Harry, "What did you do to him?" he near shouted, drawing his wand and advancing on him even as Harry put his own in his pocket, along with the map. Harry smiled sweetly at him before morphing his face into one of shock, confusion and a little bit of fear, which caused Fred to blink, perplexed.

"And what," Harry resisted the urge to sigh at the dramatic pause, "did Mr. Potter do to your brother, Mr. Weasley?"

Fred's face paled as he caught sight of McGonagall turning the corner from which he and his brother had come, "Professor," he started, looking towards Harry's scared expression and then back at his outstretched arm that holding his wand threateningly over the figure sprawled on the ground, "It's not how it seems," he said, hopefully.

McGonagall's eyebrows rose, "Indeed, and how does it seem to you?"

George obviously didn't know what to do, torn between raging at McGonagall about Harry, or finding out what was wrong with his brother. One last look at Harry had him deciding against the former, the malevolence that the boy had emitted as he had threatened them earlier had Fred acting in self preservation. "I, I thought he had done something to hurt George," he said, walking over to his brother, who was no longer hunched over, but still held his hand tentatively against his temple. Harry hadn't been kind whilst searching though his memories, it was likely that the headache would last the rest of the evening.

The professor turned a critical eye towards George. "And are you harmed?" she asked, barely trying to conceal her exasperation.

George looked towards Fred first, understanding the message in his twin's eyes, "No, just a sudden headache," he replied, eyes downcast.

"So why was Mr. Potter on the floor, at _wandpoint?_" she asked sternly. Harry could see that the twins didn't have a plan to get them out of this mess. So he decided to do it for them.

"Professor," he spoke up shyly, "It's okay, really. It was my fault really, I know I shouldn't be out but I was running back to my dorm. I wasn't watching where I was going and," he paused here, shuffling his feet and forcing a blush to stain his cheeks, "I bumped into George, or is it Fred?" he looked nervously towards the twins.

McGonagall sighed to herself, "Why is it that it's always you two?" she asked herself more than anyone else, tiredly rubbing her eyes.

"Professor?" Harry questioned quietly, affecting a trembling lip and watery eyes, "Have I put everyone in trouble?" he asked as if it was the worst thing he could possibly imagine doing.

The stern eyes softened at the pathetic image that Harry presented, "Of course not Mr. Potter, everyone here has placed _themselves_ in trouble." Harry presented her with a relieved and grateful face.

McGonagall seemed to gather herself and the stern glint returned to her eye, "You are all still in trouble however, ten points from each of you for being out after curfew, and detention for you two," she said, gazing at the twins, "after dinner tomorrow, I shall expect you there at eight o'clock precisely. Now, off to bed!"

Dejectedly, the twins turned on their heels and stalked in the direction of the Gryffindor tower with their tails between their legs.

"I shall be escorting you back to Ravenclaw young man," she said, turning to Harry, "I'm letting you off lightly this time, but make sure this never happens again, do you understand?" McGonagall asked rhetorically, as she then turned and started walking the opposite way from the twins and towards Ravenclaw tower. Harry didn't bother concealing his glare.

x ~ x ~ x

Harry lay in his bed after McGonagall had left him at the entrance to Ravenclaw tower, content, for once, in being in his dorm rather than the library. He had cast a few sixth year privacy charms around his drapes before conjuring up a softly glowing ball of light above the activated Marauder's Map, which he was now studying.

There were a lot of things about the map that intrigued Harry, it didn't show the Chamber of Secrets, but it did show a number of secret passages in and around the school that could cut some of Harry's journey times down considerably. Two of those passages even led straight to Hogsmeade, one surfacing at the shrieking shack, the other in the cellar of Honeydukes. Harry vowed to spend more time exploring the castle in the near future.

The other intriguing thing about the map was the small black dot in the Gryffindor tower that had no business being there.

"Peter Pettigrew."

* * *

**A/N **So here it is.. sorry to leave it on a bit of a cliff hehe. I know it was a bit long winded and not too much happened, but at least you get a little taste of what Harry has become. Reviews are very welcome, as usual. Thank you for your support, I'm overwhelmed at the amount of people favouriting and following the story that I've found growing in some strange place in my mind, and I've got to say, you guys really are what keeps me going!  
With love

apisci


	4. 4 News

**A/N **Hey! A massive thank you to everybody that's reviewed, favourited/followed this! This chapter took a bit longer to write, but since school's started up again you'll have to get used to it from now on =P

**Disclaimer** I DO NOT OWN HARRY POTTER. Unless you count the copies of the books sitting on my bookshelf. The Potterverse is all JKR's wonderful imagination.

_~Parseltongue~_

_'Mind speak'_

* * *

**4. News**

"Harry, my boy, please take a seat," Dumbledore exclaimed happily from his place by the fire as the door opened, nodding towards the empty chair opposite him.

Even after all such meetings over the years, Harry still couldn't quite manage to suppress a flinch at the endearment. Harry didn't belong to _anyone_, least of all to this irritating hypocrite. His actions were pure reflex, after years of practice: looking shyly up at the wizened man with a hint of awe in his eye. He made sure to blush slightly as Dumbledore smiled at him before sitting dazedly in the offered chair. His little escapade with the Weasley twins had only been the night before and Harry was still deciding on what to do concerning Peter Pettigrew's return from the dead, so he wasn't entirely thrilled with the surprise audience with the headmaster.

"Liquorice wand?" the man asked, which made Harry scowl inwardly, hating the confectionary.

"Yes please sir," he somehow injected an eager tone into his voice. Harry took one from the bowl on the desk and started chewing on one end, looking at the tie in Dumbledore's beard.

"Now then my boy, what can I do for you?" Harry supposed that this a trick to make people feel indebted towards the headmaster, assuming that _he _could deal with anything that they couldn't, it was a power play. Unfortunately for Dumbledore, Harry wasn't about to fall for any of that.

"Sir?" he asked, affecting a puzzled expression, "you were the one who wanted to meet with me." There, he thought, pleased as he made it seem that he was setting time aside for Dumbledore.

The ever present twinkle in the headmaster's eyes didn't falter, irritatingly, it seemed to intensify as he contemplated Harry. "So I did, forgive me, but I was curious about the manner in which you passed the first task," Harry looked up, surprised at the directness of the question and wary with the headmaster's sudden change in tactics. The worried expression he wore on his face was more real than he felt entirely comfortable with.

"I – I don't know what happened sir, I just remember feeling really scared, I didn't want to die. I wanted something to shield me, protect me. I just wanted the dragon to go away. Then the flames came out of nowhere, and when they were gone, so had the dragon! I was so relieved," Harry mumbled all of this so quickly that it took Dumbledore a moment to register what he had said.

In the pause Harry nervously shuffled his feet and chewed on his liquorice wand, casting anxious glances at the other man. In his head he was panicking, he didn't know where Dumbledore was going with this line of questioning; he had come to his office expecting nothing more than their usual sparring match when Dumbledore tried to trick Harry into revealing himself, who then deflected the questions whilst trying to maintain appearances. He always felt off kilter in the headmaster's office, he never took his companions to see the headmaster with him, afraid that his hatred of the man coupled with their predatory instincts would result in the man's death. Harry wouldn't mind it if Dumbledore died, but there were too many portraits on the walls, too many witnesses, and Harry wanted to get through Hogwarts with as little attention paid to him as possible. He swore in his head, he was front page news due to the damn Triwizard Tournament; he had the old coot to thank for that too.

"And you didn't feel tired? At all?" Harry noted that the man's eyes kept flickering towards the roaring fire.

With tremendous effort, Harry managed to slow his heartbeat, retreating behind his mask, "a little bit," he said, shifting guiltily in his seat, "but I wanted to look strong in front of everybody, so I hid it," talking around the liquorice.

Again, Harry's heartbeat rocketed as Dumbledore gazed piercingly at him, ignoring Harry's antics. This was different, something was wrong. Dumbledore _knew _something. Harry very suddenly missed Chiana's comfortable weight underneath his robes.

"Minerva also told me of your night-time incident with the Weasley twins last night," Dumbledore's gaze softened, as did the pounding in Harry's ears, "I'm very disappointed in you, growing boys need their sleep after all."

Harry stiffened with the hidden barb, he was quite sensitive about his height, he'd barely grown a foot since his first year and he hated the way that nearly everybody was rocketing up around him. He forcibly relaxed his shoulders, "I'm sorry sir," he said softly, looking shamefaced, "I just wanted a walk, I couldn't sleep after the dragon." He hoped Dumbledore took his stiffness as an admission of guilt, rather than what it really was.

Dumbledore smiled, as if finally satisfied with something, before speaking again, "It's quite alright my boy. Now, off you go, dinner will be served in half an hour."

Harry beamed at the man, turning away and heading for the door, "Oh, and Harry?" Dumbledore added softly, contemplating the fire again, a slight frown on his face. Harry inwardly groaned and turned on the spot at the same time.

"Yes, headmaster?" he said, matching Dumbledore's tone.

"I'll be watching over you, I don't want anything untoward happening to one of my champions." This was said in absolute seriousness, sharp eyes flickering up to meet Harry's own. Anyone could hear the warning with those words, _don't push your luck again, _but to Harry they were thunderous.

"Okay," Harry replied, still smiling, and walked out of the door, shutting it rather harshly behind him.

He leaned back against the wall to the side, letting his head fall back and releasing a troubled sigh. He stayed like that a moment, content not to think, before relaxing his face into the pureblood mask.

_One_ of his champions. That's what he had said, the other obviously being Cedric Diggory, or was it? Harry just couldn't believe that the man was talking of solely something as petty as the tournament, and then the headmaster's sudden change in toneerw, Harry couldn't remember ever seeing the man so serious, so _deliberate_. Well then, that could only mean one thing, Dumbledore had plans for Harry, other than being a puppet for the light, that Harry wasn't privy to, to his great annoyance; even if it was only because he wasn't then able to foil them.

So Dumbledore wanted to use him, Harry allowed a small smile to grace his lips, able to guess exactly what Chiana and Rasp would think about that. Meeting reviewed, Harry reconstructed his face, eager to tell his companions his most recent revelations: either Dumbledore still believed his act, and was trying to seduce Harry to the light, or he wasn't entirely sure but still trying anyway, wanting an obvious source of powerful magic by his side. He returned to his dorm at a near jog.

The sight of the fireplace in the common room brought to mind Dumbledore's apparent fascination with fire during their meeting. As he was leaving the office, he had noticed what looked like burnt parchment on the flames, but since he couldn't do anything about it, he had decided to ignore it. Harry now regretting not probing the issue, but no matter, he had a feeling he would find out if the parchment contained anything significant in the near future.

x ~ x ~ x

Dumbledore looked down into his fireplace; one corner of the single piece of parchment he had thrown on earlier hadn't completely burnt away, leaving two lines of barely legible handwriting.

_'-to turn out this way. I'm so sorry. I'm begging you to forgive me my foolishness pup._

_Your loving godfather,_

_Padfoot'_

The man sighed, looking his age for once, and removed his glasses to rub tiredly at his eyes. Sirius Black's escape from Azkaban had surely complicated matters concerning Harry. He would have to ponder the best course of action.

x ~ x ~ x

~_You need more sleep,~ _Harry winced at the disapproving voice. He had given his companions a brief summary of the events in Dumbledore's office in the few minutes he had before dinner, and had spent the next hour afterwards explaining the meeting in detail and answering any questions that the snakes had asked until they were both content. Chiana didn't seem that worried about the headmaster, but Harry was more inclined to believe in Rasp's concerns, promising him that he would keep especially alert around the old man in the future. He had then spent most of the night in the restricted section of the library, researching necromancy and the dead with the map by his side, opened to show Pettigrew's dot. Frustratingly, his search had turned up nothing. He had noticed that Pettigrew seemed to gravitate around Gryffindor tower though, and the boy's dorms especially. He had sent Chiana to watch over the entrance.

~_Child!~_Harry focused on the scene in front of him, leaving his thoughts on Pettigrew for later, just in time to see himself walk headfirst into a fuming Ron Weasley.

They both separated with a surprised "oof," Harry whispered a quick apology to Rasp, who had also gotten bashed on his place coiled around Harry's waist.

"OI! Watch it will you! Bloody Ravenclaw, head in the clouds," Ron snarled down at him, a full foot taller than Harry before recognising the face, or rather, the lightning bolt scar across his forehead.

Hermione, who was by Ron's side, recognised Harry and tried to placate the angry redhead, Harry stood by, bemused by it all as she shot him an apologetic look. Weasley was a hothead, and it seemed as if he was already pissed off, so he was probably planning to use Harry as a stress reliever. Harry would use the opportunity to play Weasley and earn some sympathy from the rest of the school, he was getting tired of ignoring their suspicious looks. He tried to appear as apologetic as he could, looking anxiously between his housemate and the irate lion, looking for all the world as if he wanted the ground to open up under him and swallow him whole.

"No Hermione, not this time!" Ron said loudly, causing everybody in the hallway to look between the two of them and, like vultures, pause to watch.

Ron turned back to Harry, who would have been proud if he could see what a pathetic picture he was creating, "You think you're so special don't you, Mr. High-and-Mighty Triwizard champion?!" Harry put all his effort into appearing positively cowed by the taller boy. He noticed Hermione putting her hand on Ron's shoulder; it was gratifying to know that she wasn't completely leaving Harry to fend for himself. Harry would reconsider the girl at a later time.

"What makes you so special, huh? How come you can break all the rules and get away with it, while my brothers get detention? You were all caught at the bloody same time! As if that wasn't enough you put your own bloody name in the goblet! You really must crave the attention!" he started ranting, shrugging off Hermione's hand with barely a thought. Against his instinctual nature, Harry shrank back into himself, his persona demanding such an action, although this only seemed to fuel Ron's rage to a higher level, "Look at you!" he sneered, eyeing Harry up and down with distaste, "you're a pathetic excuse for a wizard. You barely get by in your classes, you're a failure of a Ravenclaw, sure you vanquished you-know-who as a baby, but the fame's gone to your head! Everybody's saying that you're the great hope of the future, but all I see is a weak, mad little _child_ who wouldn't win in a duel against a first year!"

Harry pondered this, almost laughing at how wrong the Weasley was, he had suffered worse at the orphanage as a child, he still hadn't found a spell to remove the cigarette burns that Peter had placed on his body, but all the other scars were long healed. Nevertheless, he conjured tears to his eyes, not letting them fall just yet, but appearing just on the edge of broken. His lower lip trembled.

_~Look at their faces! You truly have become a master,~_ Harry disguised a laugh as a hiccup as he heeded Rasp's words, looking around at his audience. He had them wrapped around his finger, making them see him as the poor, helpless victim and Weasley as the unreasonable antagonist, even though most of them hated him for the same reasons Weasley was describing.

_~Hypocrites,~ _Harry managed to whisper back to the snake, barely moving his lips, he felt a small hum in agreement.

Ron, the egoistic git that he was, didn't notice any of this, "What makes you better than the rest of us?" he reiterated, "All I see is a near-squib FREAK that has a wand!"

Harry stopped at that word, 'freak'. The children at the orphanage knew better than to get on Harry's bad side now, every time someone was even slightly rude to him Harry made sure that they were regretting it for weeks. His 'punishments' were always considerably worse whenever someone had called him a freak, so much so that the word quickly became taboo. All the children there were now afraid even to think of it.

But Ron Weasley wasn't, and Ron Weasley would be punished.

Harry's eyes darkened as he whipped out his wand, the tip less than an inch away from Weasley's throat. He now stood taller, and he had stopped with his trembling. Perhaps it was time that the 'Harry' everybody knew finally grew a backbone.

~_Do not appear so confident! Stupid child! All those years in hiding, all that hard work! And you throw it away for what? A petty jibe!~ _Harry noted Rasp's useful tip, making his wand arm tremble, and the fist by his side to shake. He made his stance a bit awkward, as if unused to wielding a wand and made his eyes shine, but not with tears as he looked up at Weasley, who was now wearing a shocked expression. He couldn't do anything about the speed at which he had drawn his wand; that had already come to pass. He ignored the rest of Rasp's words.

"Don't _ever_ call me that again," he said, hating how he had to make his voice waver. What he wouldn't give to show Ron just how _pathetic _and _weak_ he really was. He would have Ron licking the floor within seconds.

Ron seemed to catch up with the situation, disregarding Harry's wand, probably thinking that the raven haired boy wouldn't ever use it on him. He narrowed his eyes at Harry before smiling gleefully, "what Potty? Call you a freak? Why not Potty, it is what you are after all!" he taunted, before leaning in to Harry's face, "_freak," _he hissed loudly, before turning away.

Suddenly Harry was eleven again, seething with anger as he watched Peter walk away from his doubled over form. He had been humiliated and called a freak then too. He hadn't done anything about it then, he hadn't had the power to. But he did now.

He glared at Weasley's retreating back, ignoring the concerned look Hermione shot him before chasing after him. The crowd around him dissipated slowly, leaving Harry standing in the middle of the hallway, glaring at the empty space where Ron had been before he had turned the corner, about to set off in the same direction.

~_Child! ... CHILD!~ _Rasp tightened uncomfortably around Harry's waist, causing him to wince in discomfort.

~_Please,~ _started Harry, realising how ridiculous his scheme was and was suddenly weary, _~can we not talk about this later? I don't have the energy for it right now.~_

Harry could feel the snake's malcontent, ~_Very well, but we _will_ be discussing this later tonight. Don't think I'll have forgotten about it.~_

He sighed, grateful, pocketing his wand and making his way to his next lesson, plotting various untraceable, _unfortunate events_ that would befall Weasley before the week was out.

x ~ x ~ x

"Mr. Potter, care to share your thoughts on the question?" Harry stifled a yawn, it was the last lesson of the day, and he was far too tired to really care about arithmancy, especially considering that he had self studied it years ago. He merely looked up at Professor Sinistra in a way that said he didn't have any idea what to say and, as if on cue, Hermione's hand shot up from beside him. She then answered his question for him, quoted straight from the textbook, page 462, if Harry remembered correctly.

He was bored as well as grouchy: stuck with ways of tracking down Pettigrew, unable to initiate his revenge on Ron until the next morning, in dire need of sleep and not finding the arithmancy challenging enough to fully engage his brain. It was only fifteen minutes until the lesson was over, but Harry simply couldn't help but fall asleep.

_He was standing at the entrance to a decrepit mansion; the iron gates were rusted over and paint was flaking off in varying sized chunks. The door swung open at his touch. So the building knew magic. Instinctively, Harry knew that this wasn't a dream, everything was in sharp focus, every detail crystal clear. So what did that make this? A vision? No, visions of the future were never in focus as the events within them hadn't actually occurred, so he was seeing either the past or the present, it was night-time, so he presumed he was watching a scene from the past._

_"Yes master, everything is moving according to plan. The boy will be with us near the end of the year, then you shall be glorious once again," the voice was harsh, as if it hadn't been used for a very long time and came from the top of the stairs in front of him. Harry cautiously climbed up them._

_"Good, good. You'd best not fail me Wormtail. Else things will get very... unpleasant... for you in the future." _

_Wormtail. The voice had said Wormtail, one of the names of the Marauders! Harry followed the voice, walking silently up the rest of the stairs and through an open door, hugging the shadows as he spotted two men and a doll like creature sitting on a chair. The men were both kneeling, facing the chair._

_"Have faith in me, my lord! I will not fail you," one of the men keened, desperate to prove his worth. Harry made sure to drink in every detail of the man before turning back to his earlier train of thought: was Wormtail actually Sirius Black? He wasn't what he had imagined him to be, in fact, something deep inside Harry told him that it was not. So either his father or Pettigrew could be Wormtail, but his father was dead, meaning that this had to be Pettigrew! _

_Harry's first assumption proved correct at the other man's words, "My lord," he said with a flourish, Harry rolled his eyes at the theatrics, "is it true that Sirius Black has escaped from Azkaban?"_

_Harry froze, shell-shocked; Sirius Black, escaped. His mind was spinning with the implications of that sentence._

_The doll, which Harry had deduced was some strange form of Lord Voldemort, seemed bored with the line of conversation, "Yes," he said slowly, watching as a giant python made its way luxuriously to his side, before turning sharp red eyes towards the figure, "plans will not change because of his escape. He is inconsequential."_

_The second man swallowed nervously, "but what if he came for Harry, he is the child's _godfather_ after all."_

_Voldemort sneered, "then keep him away. The plans will _not_ change. Keep up your reports on what you learn of the boy in your classes."_

_The man paled, "yes, my lord," he whispered, rising from his knees and backing respectfully out of the room. Voldemort turned in a bored manner to Pettigrew._

_"What are you still doing here?" he asked and, before Pettigrew had a chance to answer, "Crucio."_

x ~ x ~ x

Harry opened his eyes to a white ceiling, his vision was blurry, and he frowned as he tried to remember where he had put his glasses.

_'You're bleeding,' _Harry near jumped at Chiana's voice in his head, suddenly noting the dull pain in his forehead and the scent of blood. Well, perhaps that was Chiana's senses leaking through their mind link, Harry's sense of smell wasn't that acute. Curious, he steadily bridged the gap to Chiana's mind, wanting to see if he could sense what she did. It was remarkable, despite a noticeable lack of colour everything else was enhanced, the familiar scent of the hospital wing was almost lost under a thousand other scents of potions, people and predominantly Madam Pomfrey.

_'Do you always see like this?'_

_'Yes,' _was Chiana's smug answer, _'that's nothing though, watch this.'_ Chiana took over his sight and focused on the moving portrait of madam Pomfrey that hung above her office door, then the picture got a hundred times bigger. Chiana's eyes had _zoomed in_ on the portrait. He also noted how perfect the eyesight actually was, snake eyes might be a topic worth looking into in order to fix his own imperfect vision.

_'That's... amazing. Can all snakes do this?'_

_'No, just my kind.'_

_'And what is your kind?' _It was the one question that Harry had never thought to ask either of his companions over the years, type had seemed inconsequential.

_'I am what snake-kind call streamscales. Humans have other names for us. Rasp is septura, very important amongst us, more important than me.'_

Harry blinked, not expecting snakes to have a hierarchical system, hand wandering over to the table beside his bed that his glasses would surely be placed upon. He felt the metal frames and grabbed at them. He then frowned as he noticed the absence of his companion.

_'Where are you?' _he asked, wondering if she was playing a small joke on him and sitting up as he did so. He felt her confusion through their bond.

_'In your dorm,' _she said, as if it was the most normal thing in the world. Harry's heart thudded in his ears, it normally took months, if not years for mind bonds to strengthen enough to allow communication over long distances.

_'Impossible.'_

_'Obviously not.'_

_'Amazing,' _Harry shook his head in wonder, regretting it as the pain in his forehead quadrupled.

"Honestly Mr. Potter, we see far too much of you in here! We should place a plaque over this bed, dedicating it to – oh my goodness!"

Harry blinked as blood dribbled into his eyes, turning his vision red, belatedly noticing Madam Pomfrey standing at the foot of his bed. He put on a pained smile in reply, "I'm sorry," he mumbled, "I didn't know it was bleeding so much."

Madam Pomfrey narrowed her eyes at him, "It wasn't, at least not when I last checked on you. What have you been doing to it?" she demanded before drawing her wand and casting a quick '_scourgify'_ at him and the bloodied sheets.

He shrugged hopelessly, casting his stare down to his hands before asking, "What happened to me?"

Madam Pomfrey's mind registered the question and she let off her nagging, "I'm not quite sure Mr. Potter, can you remember anything at all since your arithmancy lesson?" Harry furrowed his eyebrows in concentration; all he remembered was feeling sleepy.

After a short while the healer spoke up, "No dreams, visions?" To which Harry shook his head, but he couldn't help but listen to a little voice in the back of his head telling him that he was missing something important.

"Hmm..." Pomfrey sighed thoughtfully before smiling brightly at him, "well sweetie, if you're feeling okay do you want to return to school? Dinner's about to begin."

Harry felt very grateful at that moment, he desperately wanted to talk to Chiana and search for Pettigrew. He nodded energetically, masking the pain in his head. He could brew a quick pain and blood replenishing potion, as well as a few pepper ups. His stores were starting to run low with all his late night escapades.

Pomfrey smiled indulgently at Harry, "Well then, off you go! Shoo!" Harry bounded out of the hospital wing, not having been changed out of his school robes and walked post-haste towards the Ravenclaw tower.

He ducked out of a secret passageway close to the tower, answering the question the brass knocker asked with barely a thought and briskly climbing the stairs to his dorm. He whispered the spell to detect other magical auras before entering the room, glad that it was empty for once. Everybody else had probably gone to dinner already, he reflected, but a few more minutes up here couldn't hurt. He cast a locking and anti-eavesdropping charm on the door, also putting up silencing shields and a notice-me-not charm. Some might call him paranoid, hell, _he _called himself paranoid, but paranoid was better than found out. He then went to his bed and sat crossed legged across the neatly made sheets, closing his drapes forcefully, applying the same charms that he had on the door, and waited for Chiana to slither up from her place under the bed.

~_Master,~ _ she said by way of greeting. Harry tried his best to ignore his discomfort at the title.

_~Chiana,~ _he replied back slowly, partially in greeting and partially to focus his attention, _~how has our bond grown so strong so quickly?~_

Chiana took a moment to coil herself loosely around Harry's frame, bringing her head to Harry's eyelevel, _~I know not,~ _ she admitted, a bit miffed, ~_does it really matter _how_? Surely the important thing is that it has.~_

Chiana was many things, and Harry loved every part of her, but at times she did lack a certain _something_ that all the other snakes he had met possessed. Her thought process was simplistic in style, and she seemed under the impression that everybody else thought in that same way. Her naivety was actually rather endearing at times but at others, such as now, it only served to frustrate him. He sighed, exasperated and wished that Rasp was around. Now, _there_ was a snake whose advice was _always_ worth listening to.

~_Never mind, I will research it later. Do you know anything of my blackout?~_

_~No, except I didn't like it. I reached out to you but it seemed as if you had gone – _elsewhere. _I don't know how.~_

Harry nodded, slightly disappointed with her answer, but more determined to find out the truth, _~and have you come any closer to finding Pettigrew?~ _ referring to the watch that she had kept outside the Gryffindor common room, that morning she had reported seeing nothing for the entire night before warming herself up with Harry's body heat.

_~No,~ _she said irritably, _~all I have seen leave that place are school children.~_

Harry's face turned cold, he felt guilty for tasking Chiana such a boring job, but he didn't think Rasp would forgive him very quickly if he had asked it of the smaller snake. He wouldn't ask her to stand vigil again; it was a waste of time. A small growl left his lips, he was no closer to his goals, and an answering growl from his stomach reminded him that he hadn't eaten dinner yet either. He took a moment to compose himself, closing his eyes and mentally filing and sorting his thoughts away for later. His face morphed back into one befitting of his alter ego as he cancelled all the charms in effect around him. He then made his way down to the great hall, Chiana still wrapped around his slim frame.

He quickly slipped into the hall, carding his hand through his hair in an abashed manner before sitting in his customary seat beside Luna, who smiled dreamily up at him.

"Hi Luna!" he grinned.

"You've missed the announcement," Luna smiled, as if finding this very amusing and tucking into her pudding.

Harry's eyebrows creased slightly in mock concern, "was it about anything important?"

"No."

Harry grinned, readily accepting Luna's answer, before heartily attacking the plates of food spread out in front of him.

"Hey Harry!" came a voice from down the table, Harry identified the speaker as Michael Corner and the tone as degrading. He looked expectantly at the boy, "Who are you gonna drag along with you then?"

Harry's eyes furrowed in confusion, "He means to the Yule Ball," Harry turned slowly to face Luna.

"Yule Ball?"

"Mhmm... That's what the announcement was about, each champion has to find a partner."

Harry stared blankly at her, "and this isn't considered important?" he asked, slightly bemused at Luna's strange way of thinking.

"Not to me," Harry marvelled at Luna's ability to never miss a beat. Maybe she too had something to hide and had simply mastered the art of pretending a lot more than Harry had. It was an interesting notion. Harry ignored the rest of the table as he decided on a course of action.

"Then, would you accompany me to this ball?" he asked, projecting a slight air of confidence. He knew he had made the right choice when Luna's eyes widened fractionally in surprise.

"Of course I will Harry," she said with a small smile, recovering so quickly that Harry couldn't help but envy her. He nodded in acceptance before turning back to Corner and his cronies.

"I'll be taking Luna," he said whilst trying not to smirk at their gobsmacked expressions.

"Oh, of course you'd be taking _Loony_," Corner replied spitefully. But the reply was late and lacked any real imagination, so everybody knew that Harry had just won that point. Harry just smiled blithely, as if missing the tone.

"Ooh, look! The owls are early today," Luna looked at the descending birds happily.

"They're _all_ _Prophet_ owls!" a sixth year commented with surprise. Harry looked up the find that, sure enough, each and every owl carried a rolled up edition of The _Prophet_. He watched as one landed in front of him and stuck its leg out, asking for payment. Harry dug a knut out of a pocket, dropped it in the owl's collection pouch, and took the newspaper from its other leg.

There were already whispers, and a few whimpers of fright dispersed among them, coming from every corner of the Great Hall. Harry saw why as he caught sight of the front page, sucking in a deep breath at the title:

**_Sirius Black Escapes from Azkaban_**

_by Rita Skeeter_

_Sources at the ministry confirmed that early yesterday morning notorious murderer Sirius Black had somehow escaped the so called impenetrable walls of the island prison of Azkaban. _

_This reporter has heard numerous theories about Black's escape, the most popular is the conspiracy that followers of the dark lord You-Know-Who finally acted to save the dark lord's most faithful follower, somehow bypassing the dementors that guarded him. _

_Black is best known for betraying the parents of our saviour, the boy-who-lived, and is thought to be the dark lord's right hand man. Killing – _

Harry folded the paper in half. Disgusted that Black had somehow managed to escape from what was supposed to be the most secure wizarding prison on the continent. Again he felt that twinge of unease that told him he was missing something. Curiously, news of the escape didn't surprise Harry as much as he thought it would have done, it was almost if he had already known that Black had escaped. But that was impossible, wasn't it?

Remembering himself, he looked up to the headmaster, filling his eyes with fear and desperation, making sure he sat stiffly in position, hand fisted around the newspaper. It was also curious that Dumbledore refused to meet his gaze. Harry noticed how there was a distinct lack of the _Daily_ _Prophet_ in the general vicinity of the headmaster, but he made no attempt to attain one, merely sitting in his seat, looking vaguely disturbed and saddened.

So it seemed as if the headmaster had also known about Black's escape. Harry growled inwardly, how _dare _the old coot keep this to himself! Harry had had a right to know, and now he was sitting here as clueless as the rest of them. He eventually dropped his gaze, unable to sustain it without looking like he had lost control of all motor functions.

He sat silently for the duration of the gossip, then quietly left the hall, wanting to be alone. Chiana stayed silent, for which Harry was grateful, and quickly explained the situation to Rasp when they returned to the dorm, who then joined Chiana in her silence. Both companions watched over Harry as he lay in bed, physically and emotionally exhausted.

It was all happening too fast! He hadn't properly prepared for a confrontation with Black, and he wouldn't have time to with this damn tournament going on. There were a lot more eyes in the school this year, making it harder for Harry to find an empty space to study and train whenever he _did_ find the time. He felt overwhelmed by it all and he felt himself panicking as he looked unblinkingly at the wood above his bed. He took another calming breath, letting it out agonisingly slowly, realising that he needed to sleep. He was in no fit state to think of how to modify the plans his entire life had revolved around to date.

x ~ x ~ x

Harry woke up with a cold sweat, throat sore from screaming profanities. He was glad that he had still had enough of his wits about him to put up silencing and privacy charms around his drapes before he fell asleep, this was one event that he would not have liked to explain to his dorm mates.

Harry had dreamed of his vision earlier in the day and he put his head in his hands, rubbing his face to stay awake. At least he had remembered this time. Black had escaped and Voldemort had dismissed him as insignificant, meaning that the dark lord hadn't played a part in it.

Either Black had truly managed to escape on his own, or he had some other form of help on the outside. The latter idea was the more disturbing of the two, as it meant that there was some other faction out there that Harry knew nothing about. _And_ it was on the move.

And then there was Pettigrew, who was somehow in the school, but meeting with the dark lord on what Harry assumed was a regular basis. He had to be leaving the school at some points, but it was impossible to monitor the black dot on the Marauder's map constantly, never mind the physical body that Harry had never seen wandering around the school before.

He sighed, frustrated. Idly, he wondered if Black would try to come after him as the second man had suggested, making a mental note to brush up on his offensive and defensive magic, no longer trusting the wards around Hogwarts as much as he might have done before news of Black's escape. If the man had escaped the most heavily warded prison in the country, what was to say he couldn't penetrate the school's defences?

Harry lay back on his bed, snuggling under the duvet as he had cooled rapidly since waking, intending to review the scene again and try to gain as much from it as possible. Unfortunately for his intentions, his sleep deprived mind had had enough, drifting towards subconscious before Harry had even fully formed his thoughts.

* * *

**A/N **Well, do tell me if you like it or not! And do tell me if you notice something not quite right, I don't always manage pick everything up. But yeah.. moved along nicely I think =) Tell me how you want Luna to be, I'm not sure whether or not to make her into a major character =S. I'll be skipping out a few parts of Harry's 4th year and zoning in on the intersting parts. Hopefully I'll manage to fit Harry and Sirius' first meeting into the next chapter, but we'll see how it goes! Thanks for reading, I love all of you guys!

apisci


	5. 5 Tidings of Comfort and Joy

**A/N **So... yeah, sorry about the massive wait *hides under a rock* the only excuse I've got is school... so I'll take that one. So.. as promised, we've got Sirius in this one! *grins*. This might not be what you're expecting so please don't kill me! Thank you for your opinions on Luna, it's definately helped me write this chapter :) I don't really care if you **don't** like the plot, but any other reviews (critical or encouraging) are always very well recieved on this end! I might not be able to PM all of you back, but don't mistake that for me not being grateful!

**Disclaimer: **As always, the Potterverse remains the creation and belonging of the great JKR, anything that you don't recognise from the books (or films) belongs to me though...

_~Parseltongue~_

_'Mind speak'_

* * *

**5. Tidings of Comfort and Joy**

The weeks leading up to the Yule Ball had been hectic to say the least, Harry had been so busy perfecting and learning new spells that he had barely had time to laugh at Weasley's increasingly pathetic attempts to ask girls to attend the ball with him. He had barely suppressed his grin as he watched the boy's face turn as red as his hair as he asked, no, _screamed_ for Fleur to accompany him.

Sirius and Pettigrew had yet to surface and Harry's companions were getting noticeably fed up with his 'obsession' with the both of them. They had taken to wandering off whenever he thought about them.

"Harry?" Luna's inquisitive voice swept through Harry's mind. He looked up slightly nervously, and was taken aback by how beautiful the blonde haired witch actually was. To his relief she hadn't worn some crazy dress with lots of little oddments that she usually carried around. The dress was pale blue with silver and white hemming and hints, her delicate hands were wrapped in equally delicate white leather gloves, coming up to her elbow. Her ears were adorned with tiny silver eagles, matching the one in her hair and around her waist.

"Luna." It was said half as a question. She smiled in response, eyes sparkling merrily.

"Do you like it?" she said airily, twirling around for Harry's benefit.

"You look beautiful," he said back truthfully. Luna smiled knowingly back at Harry, subtly moving her arm, reminding Harry to offer his own. He did so, and they both walked into the hall, last in a procession of champions and their partners.

"Harry, are you feeling alright?"

Harry glanced sideways to the nymph on his arm, lifting the corner of his mouth, "just fine."

The first dance was a spectacle, Harry had made sure his alter ego had been seen practicing enough to warrant a decent, if not excellent, performance, and with Luna being Luna, they were very well received.

"Where did Potty learn how to dance?" Harry and Luna were still slightly breathless from their dancing when they heard Weasley's voice behind them. A thousand retorts sprang to his mind, but he didn't get to say a single one of them.

"At least he's not dragging his date around and refusing to do anything, unlike someone I'm ashamed to say that I know." Harry blinked as he recognised the voice from his left, this was... unexpected. He looked back towards Weasley, who was fast turning red.

"Well, I have enough good taste at least to leave _those_ slu-"

"Do you really want to finish that sentence?" This time it was Draco's turn to blink, surprised. To be honest, Harry was getting irritated by Draco and Weasley's constant bickering, he just couldn't be asked to hear it again tonight.

Weasley turned on Harry, glaring angrily, and Harry matched the stare, wanting Weasley to cower away. He felt a slight pressure on his arm, "Harry," it was Luna's voice, whispering in his ear, "don't lose it now, not after four years."

It took him less than a second to hear the reason in her words, but he still held the stare just a bit longer, not able to resist a last little evil smile as he turned away and let himself be led back to the dance floor by Luna. When he next caught Draco's eye, he made sure to give him a little imperceptible nod, which the blonde haired boy judiciously returned.

The dancing carried on until midnight, many couples escaped into the gardens to enjoy each other away from prying eyes. Most came back red faced with embarrassment with a sour Professor Snape guiding them in. There were no other confrontations between him and Weasley, or Dumbledore either, for which he was grateful. He was just about able to keep himself together without any extra hassle.

x ~ x ~ x

"Don't wander off now Harry," Luna's voice, soft as the wind, gently caressed Harry's ear. He wearily opened his eyelids.

"How long?" he asked, his true voice was confident, sharp. Luna returned him a confused look, "how long have you been hiding? Like me?" he elaborated.

They were alone in their journey back to the Ravenclaw dormitory, and this corridor wasn't as brightly lit as in other parts of the castle. Luna halted and grabbed Harry's arm, pulling them both into a dark alcove. She looked down and back up again, but when she did, her eyes had changed, whereas before they had been airy and bright, they were now focused, sharp and intelligent, "You won't tell anyone."

This was said more as a statement, but Harry nodded his head in agreement anyway, "and before you ask: since I first met you. I knew you were different, so don't think that I can't keep a secret."

She looked into his eyes and nodded, satisfied, "and I already know about you. Since my mother died," her voice then softened, "everybody will tell you that it was a potions accident, but really, it was Dumbledore's Order of the Phoenix."

Harry creased his eyebrows, confused, "the group he brought together to fight Voldemort?"

Luna nodded, eyes as cold as ice in a glare that would do any Malfoy proud, "that's all you need to know. I have my own reasons to fight Dumbledore, and it's so much simpler as strange little Loony Lovegood, though I suppose you already knew that, being Potty and all?"

Harry smiled at her, revelling in the knowledge that he wasn't alone. He bowed his head, bringing his forehead into contact with Luna's, "and how, exactly, did you know that I have a grudge against Dumbles?"

Luna blew in his face, "I wasn't placed in Ravenclaw for no reason, when you know what you're looking for, people like us are quite easy to spot." It was then that Harry heard a footstep, and then another, and another. He placed a finger on Luna's lips to silence her as he waited for the footfalls to pass them both by, his heartbeat increased as his mind went into overdrive. Who in their right minds would be out here now, all alone? What if it was Pettigrew? The very man that he had been trying to corner for months! He wouldn't miss this chance. He drew his wand and pointed it straight at the intruder's back.

He knew it was a mistake as soon as he saw the silhouette. The figure was tall and lanky and, from what he had heard of Pettigrew, completely the wrong figure. The air thickened as Harry paused in the moment, and he watched the figure tense in slow motion. The silhouette span around with incredible speed and hit a pressure point in his wrist with nearly excessive force. His wand flew out of his hand and rebounded off the far wall and Harry noticed that the man had trapped his wrist in the hand that had knocked away his wand. Luna was beside him in a flash. Wand out, eyes dangerous.

"Sirius Black, release him."

As Harry recognised the name heat seemed to travel from his heart and smoulder in his eyes. His eyes turned a dark forest green as he narrowed them at the traitor. He opened his trapped hand and sent a pulse of energy directly at the fugitive. It was something he had been developing for a while, it took a lot more energy, but the result was tremendous.

Sirius was thrown down the corridor, releasing Harry in shock. He landed with a heavy thump on his back. Harry felt a spark of pleasure as he heard the older man groan in pain. He had wanted to wait for at least another two years before coming face to face with the traitor, it wasn't that he didn't know how to deal with the man right now, just that he could deal him a lot more pain and anguish with two years more of studying the dark arts.

But this could happen now. Looking down at the crumpled man, Harry _wanted_ this to happen now.

He summoned his wand back to his hand with barely a thought, he then realised that the corridor directly outside the Ravenclaw common room was hardly the best place for such events to take place, exposed as it was. He quickly fired a stunner at the man, binding him and then levitating him. He looked hard into Luna's eyes for a mere second, telling her that he didn't want her with him, and walked away with an unconscious Sirius Black gliding along behind him. If Luna wasn't watching carefully, she would have seen the two figures disappear under a strong disillusionment charm.

Harry didn't know where he was going, but sneaking out of the castle with the ball going on was difficult enough without having a limp body floating along behind you, so, instead of going down, he was climbing a set of disused stairs on the east side of the castle. His mind was wandering, he was in no fit state to be making decisions like this, he was on the brink of physical and mental exhaustion and his conscious state was only thanks to the great magical reserves he held within him. So he let the magic guide him.

He _listened_ to the magic of Hogwarts in a way he had never thought possible before, many witches and wizards before had said that Hogwarts was a sentient building, but Harry now had the feeling he was experiencing more than most of them had even imagined. The castle was guiding him, recognising the purpose in his mind and telling him the right path to take. Some dim thought in the back of Harry's mind realised that he could feel the castle working only because his logical mind was quiet, resting... recovering.

Harry trusted the castle enough, it may be sentient, but it had no motive other than to aid its inhabitants, to let it lead him through the school and so he turned his thoughts to what he would do to Sirius Black. He fantasised about breaking bones, tearing skin from flesh and flesh from bone, of ripping, crushing and slicing various components of his traitor's body.

He next became aware of himself, or rather, the lack of Hogwart's guiding presence, in the middle of a massive, bare and dingy room. He could vaguely remember being on the seventh floor and a hideous painting of a dancing troll. In the centre of the room was what looked like a clear glass box, small enough that a man would be able to spread his arms and touch all four walls from the same spot. Harry looked dubiously at the box, and then turned around to eye Black's still unconscious form. All this seemed a little too... perfect.

"Dobby," he hissed into the air, calling the little creature. The house elf had once belonged to the Malfoy's, but had been gifted to the school as a peace offering when Draco had nearly destroyed a whole greenhouse in second year. Dobby was by far the most approachable house elf, even if he did believe that everything he did deserved punishment. The elf appeared without a sound, as every house elf did since Harry had discovered that they only made a loud crack to scare and annoy their masters; their singular act of defiance in a life of slavery. But Harry was not their master, nor had any intention of being such, and his saying so seemed to have given him immunity to their small prank.

"Yes Harry Potter?" Dobby's voice was respectful, but not outright subservient.

"What is this room, and where is it?" There was no need to bother with flowery language with house elves, they were efficient creatures and most of the time preferred bluntness.

Dobby paused, looking around the room, "This is being the come and go room, what wizards calling the Room of Requirement, it's on the seventh floor, and to get in one paces back and forth three times outside the entrance whilst thinking on the purposes of the room."

Oh, and house elves were also a lot cleverer than wizards ever gave them credit for. Really, the similarities between Harry and these creatures almost sickened Harry. But at least Harry didn't put up with slavery. He had read about the Room of Requirement, mostly thought of as a myth, and knew that it could be trusted. "Thank you," he replied to Dobby in dismissal. The elf disappeared soundlessly.

He looked back towards the box, thinking of a door to get in. Almost instantaneously one appeared, Harry willed it open and flung Black inside, lips twitching as he heard two successive thuds as the man first hit a wall, and then the floor. He wished for a lock on the door after it slammed shut and then cast heavy wards and alarms over the glass. If Black attempted an escape, Harry would know about it. With one last look, he considered making it so that Black couldn't see out and, with a shrug, cast a spell that would turn the glass into a mirror on the inside of the cell whilst still allowing anyone outside to see in. He then turned around and left the room, wanting nothing more than to curl up and sleep on his bed.

x ~ x ~ x

~_Child, wake up,~_

_~Leave me be.~_

Harry heard the thud of snakeflesh hitting his head before he registered the pain of the impact. His eyelids fluttered for a second before sleep won out once again. The next thing he felt was a sharp pain in his shoulder, he sat bolt upright at once and one of his hands flew to his shoulder. He could already smell the blood.

_~You have things to do. Get up.~_

Harry glared at Rasp, one of whose fangs was stained a bright red from Harry's blood. His body ached and his mind was still a bit groggy but he had reached full consciousness and knew that falling back asleep would be both a waste of time and a bad idea. So he reached for his glasses and got out of bed.

Harry looked outside as he walked across to the showers; it seemed that Rasp had given him an extra hour in bed than he usually would have done. Harry cursed bad naturedly, wishing that Rasp had just let him sleep the whole day away.

There was a sharp rap at the door which had Harry freezing in place and Rasp diving under the covers of his bed.

"Hell-"

"The Wrackspurts said that you would probably want some of this," said Luna brightly, inclining her head towards a tray of food and potions that she was carrying with frightful grace. Harry could only blink stupidly at her, only shifting his gaze when the tray had been placed directly in front of him. He analysed the assortment.

"This one is for magical regeneration, the one next to it for physical," she started, pointing out two green bottled potions in the top left corner of the tray, "this one to deter bad wrackspurts, fix your eyesight-"

"Luna," started Harry carefully, mainly stalling so he could wrap his head around what she was doing for him, "there isn't a potion to cure eyesight."

To which Luna smiled brilliantly, "There is now," she said with only a hint of glee. Harry shook his head in mock disbelief and somewhere, his real personality noted that he was automatically creating yet another mask he could wear around Luna. So he had trust issues, they would probably help keep him alive.

"And this one?" Harry asked, not wanting to draw attention to his thoughts, pointing towards an amber coloured liquid in a sizable clear bottle.

"Whiskey," she said matter-of-factly, "you seem as if you need a boost."

"Luna, I'm fourteen, you're thirteen, where on earth did you get whiskey from?"

Luna looked sharply at him, "and where on earth did you learn to _throw_ _pure magic_ at a man?"

Harry held her gaze.

"Just drink the potions, they'll make you feel a lot better."

Harry quickly checked that the potions he was familiar with were the right colour and thickness before swallowing them with a grimace, but he made a point of leaving the others alone.

Sighing, Luna drank half of each of the other potions before looking at Harry again, who still didn't make a move to take either of them.

"As you wish, _great_ Lord Potter," Luna sighed as she left the room.

She had left the tray on his bed. Harry ruffled his hair in an uncharacteristic show of irritation. Shower first, then think about everything else.

Harry sighed gratefully when he felt individual droplets of water spraying him from above, he stood motionless for a good five minutes letting the water cleanse his skin and work its way through his hair. The action of washing himself reminded him of the filthy man currently residing on the seventh floor.

Good mood shattered, Harry angrily turned off the water and slammed his fist into the wall, eyes lit as he savoured the pain in his hand. He rested his head against the wall and closed his eyes, remembering to breathe deeply. _Too soon, two _years_ too soon. _He thought mournfully to himself. He wasn't mentally prepared for a confrontation with his parent's betrayer.

_~Child...~ _Rasp's quiet hiss knocked Harry out of his reverie, who then glared shortly at the snake before casting a drying charm on himself and getting dressed. The snake followed him out of the bathroom.

_~Child!~ _the hiss was a little more impatient this time.

_~Let me be! I need to think about some things before we can speak about them.~ _Harry had closed the door to the dorm before his serpentine companion could reply, he managed a calm and slightly tired facade as he walked through the common room and out the door. He controlled his gait to appear languid as he made his way to the library, it being his favourite place to think. He walked to the furthest but one alcove from the entrance and settled at one of the desks there, after a second's thought, he picked a book up at random from the shelf behind him and flipped it open to a page relatively close to the beginning in case anybody walked by.

With an ease that came only with years of practice, he called forth his mindscape and reacquainted himself with his private sanctuary. He grinned as he found himself in something akin to the forbidden forest, but much wilder. The forest was in an eternal twilight and Harry's store of memories and knowledge was only visible if you knew exactly where to look. He stood there for a moment to congratulate himself on his masterpiece; his mind didn't need something as mundane as walls to stop intruders, the eeriness of the forest at the transition of night and day did that all by itself, not to mention the many creatures lurking in every shadow. Anybody who entered Harry's mind without permission would not leave unscathed.

Harry shifted his eyes in a way that only he knew how and the jungle around him morphed into a near perfect copy of the Chamber of Secrets. While Harry knew that it was completely unimaginative he seriously doubted anyone would make it past the jungle, although that hadn't stopped him from adding the basilisk to guard it. What Chiana had described as empty space to him in the original chamber was now filled with with shelves upon shelves of books, each containing a piece of knowledge or important thought. The massive pool of water contained thousands and thousands of swirling memories and acted very much as a pensieve.

Inside Salazar's head was a space Harry had morphed into a study, a high table on the left side supported a miniature model of the forest that guarded Harry's inner mind, Harry could observe and create events in that mind space from this tableau, the rest of the room was based solely upon luxury and comfort. It was here Harry collapsed in a high backed chair and began mulling over his thoughts.

He decided to tackle something a bit simpler to start off with. The Granger girl was still willing to stick up for him, despite being close friends with the Weasley and Harry himself ignoring her for the past few years. She still might be won over, but Harry considered again, what was the real advantage in having Hermione on his side? She was startlingly clever, and excellent at research, but her duelling and practical skills were not above average.

She could make an excellent spy though, she was, after all, close friends with Weasley, whose parents were undoubtedly members of the Order of the Bird, and she would surely have Dumbledore's trust later on, when it became important. So she would provide a link to the old manipulative fool and a very helpful source of information.

Feeling better for having sorted _something_ out, Harry allowed himself a small smile as he resolved to seduce her to his side, before turning his mind to the escapee on the seventh floor.

He didn't know what to do with Black, he knew he wasn't exactly in the right frame of mind when he captured Black and tossed him into his cell, and thinking back to that night he cursed himself for his haste. He remembered how quickly and easily Black had bested him and felt no small sense of gratitude to Luna for distracting the man. He didn't feel that the time was right to be punishing Black, he wanted Black to truly wish he was dead so he could deny him the mercy, wanted to watch as the man's sanity snapped, as his soul destroyed itself with regret, remorse and guilt. But Harry wanted to _enjoy_ it, and that kind of magic couldn't be performed within Hogwarts, and he had to wait until he was seventeen before the ministry stopped tracking his magic outside of the castle walls.

He would talk to Rasp and Chiana about it.

The next most important thing was Dumbles, he was getting far too involved in Harry's affairs than he felt comfortable with. The thing that troubled Harry most was the way the old man was now approaching things, he knew that he must be getting at least a little impatient with Harry, the instigation of the Tri-Wizard Tournament was evidence enough of that.

He sighed inwardly and wished for a firewhiskey and smiled when one appeared on the small table in front of him. He sipped it and outright grinned, it even burned in the same way!

He thought back to his last confrontation with the headmaster, he couldn't shake the feeling that the headmaster was keeping something terribly important from him. The brusque way that he had been dismissed from the office, the incredibly blunt questioning and the almost obvious jab at Harry's height as well as the very deeply hidden _anxiety_ in the headmaster's eyes whenever he looked towards the fire all lead Harry to believe that the headmaster had heard something unsettling just before their meeting.

Harry wanted to know what. By all that was magical he wished that he had just taken a closer look at the fire! Maybe he would have found some floo powder residue, as difficult to spot as it was, or maybe just a small clue as to why the headmaster was so preoccupied.

He retreated deeper into his plush chair as he downed the rest of his glass with a small grimace, he schooled his thoughts into silence as he let himself relax and remained motionless for about a minute when a very lucid thought filled the silence.

It was the night Sirius Black escaped.

Dumbledore did not have a newspaper present with him the next morning at breakfast.

Dumbledore already _knew_ about the escape.

What was the _real _purpose in their late night talk? Harry suddenly felt very unsure about his presumption that it was just another 'reveal yourself' spar. He quickly ran out to his pool of memories and called up the meeting, letting it play out on the surface of the water. He quickly skipped past what he had believed to be most important before, instead focusing right in on the end of their meeting :

_Dumbledore smiled, as if finally satisfied with something, before speaking again, "It's quite alright my boy. Now, off you go, dinner will be served in half an hour."_

_Harry beamed at the man, turning away and heading for the door, "Oh, and Harry?" Dumbledore added softly, contemplating the fire again, a slight frown on his face. Harry inwardly groaned and turned on the spot at the same time._

_"Yes, headmaster?" he said, matching Dumbledore's tone._

_"I'll be watching over you, I don't want anything untoward happening to one of my champions."_

Harry let the echo of the memory fade away and the image be caught in the whorls of the memory pool before giving himself a resounding slap on his forehead.

"How can I be so stupid?" he spoke out loud for the first time, the words bounced around the chamber, it was as if his own mind agreed with the statement and was mocking him.

"Watching _over, _not just _watching_," Harry's eyes were drawn to the pool where, unbidden, came the image of Sirius Black when he had hold of his wrist.

"He _knew_ you were coming for me," he told the perfectly still image of Black, and for the first time, overwhelming hatred was not all he felt as he looked at the man, "and he never wanted us to meet," he finished off quietly.

Curiosity, hatred and uncertainty warred in Harry's mind and, being far more a Ravenclaw than a Gryffindor, curiosity won out. He made himself look at the still life in the pool without any of the prejudice he harboured before, and what he saw made him take a physical step back. For in those eyes he did not see hatred, nor evil. He saw a great sadness instead of remorse_. _He saw the desperation to explain himself. Most unsettlingly, he saw _love._

He saw all this as he looked into the eyes of the wrongly accused.

Harry jerked himself out of his meditative state only to feel reality and the great weight of truth bearing down upon him. His mind, a complete antithesis to a few moments prior was roaring with activity, lines of reasoning being created and pathways being forged from them, leading him to only one possible conclusion:

Sirius Black, somehow, was innocent.

Harry felt his eyes darken, as he realised that Dumbledore had played no small part in it.

_'Master,' _called Chiana's voice, Harry was too angry to be surprised at hearing her, '_your thoughts are like thunder and your rage befits that of a hydra. Whatever has conjured up these emotions had better fear, but remember that rash decisions are often made in haste and anger.'_

The fire in Harry's eyes was immediately replaced with icy hardness as his serpent's words sank into him. He resolved to find out the complete truth of this matter _before_ coming face to face with the fugitive.

Which meant that first, Harry should start looking for the court case notes for one Sirius Orion Black.

* * *

**A/N **Do you like Luna, love her, hate her? I hope the turn around on Harry's opinion of Sirius isn't too unrealistic either... Please feel free to share your thoughts with me on this chapter! I really want Harry to come face to face with our favourite evil maniac, so I'm hoping to get to the third task quite quickly, if you want me to slow the pace down just say and I will try my best!

apisci


	6. 6 Security

**A/N **So.. I'm a little nervous about this one. It's very dialogue-y. Thank you to everybody for your support. Kudos goes to **aliengirlguy **and **Sakura Lisel** for point some plot holes out for me *hands out cookies* Anyway... this chapter was actually quite fun for me to write, and I'll be delighted to know if it was fun for you to read.

**Disclaimer: **In no way do I own any of the characters (apart from the ones you don't recognise from the books) or the Potter universe. So please don't say that I do. That is all JKR

~_parseltongue~_

'_mind speak'_

* * *

**6. Security**

Amazingly, Harry had made easy, almost effortless, progress in his research of Sirius Black's trial. This was quite possibly attributed to the fact that there hadn't been one. Harry snorted in disgust as he put aside the last of a stack of Daily Prophets containing little to no credible information concerning the arrest and incarceration of the last of the Black lineage.

It was the winter holidays and, contrary to usual; most of the student populace had opted to remain at the castle. Harry mused quietly at the fickle nature of teenagers, knowing full well that the girls had stayed purely to ogle the Durmstrang boys, and the boys to desperately try to capture the attention of the Beauxbaton faes.  
Harry had better things to focus on, and getting through the second task was the least problematic of them.

Hedwig hooted what he assumed to be a rebuke from her perch beside him. He looked up at her and realised with a jolt that he had spent the better part of an hour sitting in the owlery reading through the large stack of newspaper reports that Hedwig had somehow managed to transport from the Daily Prophet's building in London. He smiled up at her apologetically, that owl was truly a saving grace, only ever looking out for Harry.

"Sorry girl, got a bit distracted, thank you for bringing these to me."

The great white owl ruffled her feathers and primly ignored Harry, who grinned in response. He always did feel lighter around Hedwig.

He shrank the stack of now useless newspapers beside him, placed them in his pocket, (he would not incinerate them for fear of angering his owl), slipped his usual mask back into place and wondered out of the tower.

After nearly an hour thinking on the subject, it was inevitable that his mind drifted back to Sirius Black. He couldn't help but compare his life to his own. Both had lost family that night, Black's honorary, but precious nevertheless. Both had lived in some form of prison, Harry's being the orphanage whilst Black rotted in Azkaban. Both had been failed by the wizarding world.

Harry wasn't sure how to react to the feelings of kinship that he was starting to associate with the fugitive.

He remembered exactly how it felt to be wrongly accused, to serve punishments for crimes he had not committed. The day before his eleventh birthday sprang to mind; the day he was, yet again, wrongly accused and punished: the day before he was rescued by magic.

He smiled as he remembered the elation he felt when he realised he had an escape route and finally, _finally,_ he had a way to exact his vengeance upon those poor unsuspecting _muggles_.

A pity that Dumbledore had seen it fit to interfere with his life even during first year.

**Begin Flashback**

_"Dear boy, please have a seat," the headmaster welcomed Harry into his office with an open smile and twinkling eyes, Harry was already beginning to hate those eyes, but he followed heedless of this and took the proffered seat in front of the headmaster's desk._

_"Jellybaby?" Dumbledore asked, eyes flickering to the sweet bowl on his desk. Harry pretended to be too nervous to respond, shaking his head minutely._

_"You have no reason to be nervous with me Harry. I don't bite, I assure you," the man chuckled at his own joke, Harry did his best to feign confusion, not difficult considering that he didn't know what the old man was getting at, and kept his mouth resolutely closed. The headmaster's laughter waned almost imperceptibly, but Harry, who was good at looking for such signs, took note of it._

_"How are you faring after your little flying accident?" the headmaster tried a different approach to getting Harry to speak._

_"I... don't like flying," Harry replied with a whimper, congratulating himself in both not answering the question, and making it impossible for the headmaster to press the issue. Although, his 'accident' had occurred over three weeks ago: which was long enough ago for Harry to know that it hadn't been intended as the main topic of conversation. He allowed himself to relax marginally; he had, as far as he knew, gotten away with it._

_Dumbledore's expression softened, "of course not, best not to dwell on such things."_

_He looked up, curious, before blushing and lowering his gaze again. Idiot, he thought to himself, you know Dumbledore is a mind reader._

_Since it is near the end of the year, I wanted to make a proposition to you," Dumbledore stopped, and was slightly put out when the boy didn't even look up at him, "concerning your home for the summer holidays," he added slightly grudgingly when the silence lasted an isntant too long._

_"I get to see Claire, Peter and Andrew again!" Harry said, realising that the headmaster probably intended to move him to somewhere more 'suitable'. He cast a half hopeful, half excited look at the man._

_"Well, actually, I was thinking perhaps you would do better with a proper family, _your _proper family, one who knows about the wizarding world," Dumbledore said with a pleased smile on his face._

_Harry felt a sudden despair, "No!" he cried out loud, mouth working before his brain, belatedly he affected a sad expression, the desperation was real though, if he didn't go back to the orphanage he wouldn't get to punish _any_ of them._

_Dumbledore was quite rightly taken aback by the outburst, but not suspicious, from what he had gleaned from his deputy, the boy should be jumping for joy at the promise of living somewhere else. Then again, falling off his broom had left the child slightly touched in the head; maybe he was just afraid of change?_

_"You needn't worry my boy; this family knows of the wizarding world and has very kindly agreed to take you in, if only for the summer months. It's your mother's sister and her family, they will be kind to you," he said in a placating tone._

_Harry did his best to tear up, "but, but I like my home!" he near wailed, standing up petulantly, "you can't take me away from them! You can't take me to _strangers_!"_

_Dumbledore sighed, "I'm sure they'll let you visit your old friends Harry, but you must understand that your position as the boy who lived puts you and your family at great risk."_

_This grabbed Harry's attention, and rather than losing it Dumbledore carried on, hoping to scare the boy into submission, "although you vanquished the Dark Lord ten years ago, many of his followers still remain, somehow managing to escape the ministry, and they are seeking your life in revenge for their master's fall. When your mother died, she placed you under the protection of a very old and powerful magic: we call it love. The safest place for you to be is with your family, where that magic will be renewed and kept strong. Do you understand me Harry?"_

_Harry's eyes bulged at the sudden intake of knowledge, he used the moments Dumbledore expected him to take to reason through his argument to focus in on one obvious hole. If this 'protection' really was that imperative to his survival, why wasn't he dead now, considering that he hadn't had this 'protection' for the entirety of his life? And the other was his lack of contact with any other magical being, much less one that wanted to cause him harm? The only explanation was that Dumbledore was lying, probably intentionally._

_He couldn't point out these flaws though, the months of planning and practising would all go to waste if Harry acted as intelligent as he really was at this moment; simple Harry would not be able to see this argument. Harry had lost this little battle._

_The weight of acceptance permeated the air, and Dumbledore took it to mean that the matter was settled._

_"It has been arranged already," he said, pretending not to notice Harry's act of grief, "they will pick you up from King's Cross station when the train arrives. Well done for understanding these necessary precautions. Now, back to your studies."_

_Harry seethed, it was their first confrontation; and Harry had lost._

**End Flashback**

Harry still seethed, both at the needlessness of it and Dumbledore's ideas of 'kind relatives'. It had taken Harry less than four hours to grow tired of the Dursely's constant debasing treatment of him, so all the punishments he had originally planned for his tormentors at the orphanage were instead used to punish his tormenters in Little Whinging. None of the spells were very dark, nor were they advanced or dangerous, really, they were first year level. Harry had read about the tracking spells that the Ministry employed on underage wizard's wands after all.

When a very stern looking Professor McGonagall had shown up at the door, he had sheepishly told her that he had forgotten about the underage magic laws. She had seemed content to just leave it at that.

It had been worth it.

It took a while for Harry to notice that he had stopped moving. Some part of him knew he was standing just outside the room of requirement again. Half-heartedly cursing Hogwart's sentient nature he paced back and forth as Dobby had described to open the room.

He stood for a moment in the entranceway, contemplating the man in the box, before wishing for a chair and walking over to it. The door closed behind him as he sat himself down.

Black was sat in a way reminisce of a muggle yoga position, he looked peaceful, despite the gauntness of his cheeks, the sharp detail of ribs protruding from his chest that were just visible under the collection of rags he was wearing. He felt a shot of guilt, he had forgotten to tell Dobby that he was to feed the man, Black was probably starving. But he didn't look much worse than when Harry had first locked him away, maybe he was used to the treatment in Azkaban, he mused.

Harry near hissed as he completed his once over at the product of Dumbledore's meddling. He was fairly certain that the wily old headmaster was the reason Black had never gotten a trial. He felt a sudden urge to avenge Black's treatment as well as his own. He squashed that idea as soon as he had thought it. Why should he do _anything _for Black? He didn't know a whit about him yet, and from what he had learned of blood lineage, he knew that the Blacks were a very ancient and powerful house, one that _always_ sided with the dark. He shuddered as he remembered some of the accounts of Black's cousin, Bellatrix, and some of the atrocities she committed during the war.

"Hello?"

Harry's eyes focused immediately, he was mildly surprised to find Black looking unerringly at him, even though Harry knew for certain that he couldn't see him.

"I know there's someone there, has been for quite a while. I've just spent thirteen years surrounded by bloody dementors, so I bloody well know you're watching me!"

Oh, how the mighty have fallen, "I thought pureblooded wizards were bought up to speak in a manner befitting their station," said Harry matter of factly, speaking with something very close to his true voice.

"You sound far too young to worry yourself with such idiocies notions as blood supremacy," retorted Black with a hard glint in his eyes.

"There is no age restriction to being concerned with the state of our world, Mr. Black," said Harry drily. There wasn't anything specific he wanted of Black at this moment in time, so he decided to humour the man, even if it meant talking about things as tedious as idealism.

Black seemed to take that in before his face drained of blood, "you sound so much like him.." he whispered. Harry couldn't help but raise an eyebrow at that, content to wait for the man to elaborate.

"HARRY JAMES POTTER!" came the next shout from the incarcerated man, to which Harry's other eyebrow joined the first in shock, "you let me out of here right _now_!" Black was standing now, eyes ablaze with anger and... something else. Harry just stared awhile, puzzled, before finally realising that Black must have heard his voice and thought it similar, presumably, to his father's.

Harry's eyes hardened, "Your little display has made me rather disinclined grant your request," he said in an even tone. Harry didn't like where the conversation was headed, he then thought it might be an opportunity to see how much information Black could provide him with, instead of flipping the conversation onto a different topic with the same end point. He would have to play a little ignorant in order to ascertain how truthful Black would be with his answers. He would also have to be careful; Black had just proved his talent for piecing clues together in identifying Harry.

"I think it is owed to me," he said in a firm voice, effectively silencing whatever Black was going to shout at him next, "that you answer at least some of my questions."

Black was desperately trying to see through the mirror that Harry had conjured on the inside of his box, upon seeing no weakness he slumped back down to the floor.

"Let me see your face at least," he tried miserably.

Harry considered, "why should I allow a pathetic excuse for a traitor _anything_ he asks for?" he replied in a cold voice.

"I... traitor!?" Sirius fumed, then suddenly desperate again, "Harry, you have to believe me. I _did not _betray your parents! How could I? They were probably -. No, they _were_ the best thing that ever happened to me."

Black's voice was so sincere and held such conviction that Harry very nearly forgot about his desire to uncover the truth, instead wanting to give the man the comfort and benefit of the doubt that he himself had always longed for as a child. He ruthlessly hardened his heart.

"I did not give you permission to use my given name Black, nor do I _have_ to do anything you ask of me," Harry grabbed the unwanted emotions and threw them into an imaginary box in his mindscape along with all the other emotions that he didn't want to look into.

"Please, I," Black seemed to gather himself up enough to stop begging, "I'm your _godfather_. I only want what's best for you; it's all I've ever wanted. Let me see your face, just so I can look into your eyes and you can see for yourself that when I tell you that I loved your parents, love _you_ more than anything else in this world, that I'm telling the truth."

Well, Harry had certainly not been expecting such an impassioned speech from the man. Nor could he puzzle out exactly why Black was saying what he was saying. His mind was still not quite convinced that Black really wasn't the enemy, because if he wasn't, then why had he come to Hogwarts?

_'Because he loves you'_

Harry felt a strange warmth spread through his body at Chiana's words, it was yet another feeling that Harry shoved into his box. _'Where are you? I thought you were hunting.'_

'_I am, master,' _Harry didn't know why, but the snake sounded inordinately smug to him.

_'Because I've just told you the very thing you've longed to hear for most of your life.'_

_'I do not –'_

_'Even if you refuse to accept it.'_

The last was said partly in sorrow and partly in annoyance, and a moment later Harry could no longer feel his familiar's presence in his mind. What had bought that on? Chiana very rarely got upset with him, and the fact that she had now, over something so inconsequential, did not sit well with Harry.

He hadn't gone through his life wishing that somebody would love him, as a child he had wanted a family. He still did, to some extent. But really, he knew, all he wanted was to feel that little bit of acceptance, acknowledgement for what he was, his achievements. He shook his head, disgusted with himself; such weakness was below him. They _were _below him. He could already hear the condescending words from Rasp if he ever admitted these feelings to him.

"Explain," the word came out a bit harsher than Harry had intended. Black jumped slightly at the cutting quality of the voice after the brief reprieve. He also failed to respond. Harry, slightly irate already thanks to Chiana's words, wordlessly ended the mirror charm on the inside of Black's cell in retaliation.

Black whirled around so quickly inside the cell that Harry was surprised he managed to stay on his feet. He smirked to himself; he had the advantage now that Black had been thrown off balance by the sudden change in environment.

Black stared hopefully at him, "James-"

"_Harry,_" Harry corrected firmly, "I am not my father, I didn't know my father, I implore you not to mistake us again. Now, I ask you again: explain."

Grief and recognition flashed in Black's eyes before they grew slightly distant, "I... meant to go back for you, you know," he started, and Harry didn't know how to respond when he saw tears forming under the man's eyes, "I _promised_ I'd come back for you."

Harry quickly regained himself and slipped on the Slytherin mask: it would best allow him to deal with the situation rationally. It was only after he had settled when he realised the implications of the man's words.

"_You_," he started disbelievingly, "you were the one who left me in the orphanage!" One look at Black's pained expression and he knew it to be true.

"Only for the night!" he said with desperate sadness and guilt, "it was only meant to be for the night! I didn't want you to see what I was going to do to _Pettigrew; _you were only a _baby_ after all"

Harry choked, he had always wondered who had left him in such a miserable place, learning that he had disappeared from the wizarding world the night of his parent's deaths had only made him more curious. He was about to squeeze the guilt that Black obviously felt at his actions when he remembered the Dursely's, he shuddered to think of what life would have been like if he had actually grown up around his gluttonous uncle and cousin.

"Pettigrew?" he asked sharply, eager to find out more about the last Marauder, "what had he to do with this?"

Black's expression grew frighteningly dark when he heard the name; Harry recognised it as the one he used to don whenever he used to think about Black, except Black's was also laced with guilt and personal betrayal.

"Pettigrew," the name was practically spat, and Black's gaze was fixed firmly upon the floor, "was the one to betray Lily and James."

The man took a few drawn breaths before carrying on, also giving Harry a chance to mull over his words, "I told them both to make Peter the secret keeper. I was the obvious choice of course, everybody knew I was one of James' best friends, so the Dark Lord would suspect me immediately. No one would think of Peter."

Harry had to admit that the logic made sense, but it was something that Black could quite easily have made up to cover his tracks. He decided to try and cut deeper.

"So you left me in an orphanage to track and kill Pettigrew?" he asked in a derisory tone of understanding. He felt a small sense of satisfaction when Black deflated somewhat. Wanting more of the satisfaction Harry carried on.

"If you really cared about James and Lily that much then surely you would have cared about me, their _son, _more than a filthy little _traitorous _bastard that you were foolish enough to befriend!"

Black looked as if he was about to be physically sick.

"Oh yes, Black! Congratulations for formulating a foolhardy plan to exact your revenge on your former best friend which, naturally, held more importance than I could ever hope for!" Harry couldn't stop; it's as if he'd opened the flood gates to a dam of emotions that he wasn't aware had been building up.

He remembered every childish notion of his parents saving him, every dream that someone who cared about him would rescue him, all the things he put up with staying in the orphanage because _someone _would save him and it would all be _worth_ it. The agony of shattering dreams when he found out about the wizarding world, about the Dark Lord, had nearly made him scream in his room above the Leaky Cauldron after his first visit to Diagon Alley. Knowing now that Black had placed his revenge first and Harry second... and he hadn't even accomplished his goal, that Harry's suffering had been for nothing, made the pain all the more _unbearable_.

"It's all your FAULT!" he screamed in pain, grief and righteous anger before his mind could stop him, "you forgot to think about the _fucking consequences_ of killing someone in plain sight!" Harry was breathing heavily, and was relishing the obvious pain he was causing his _godfather._

"Who's laughing now, Sirius Orion Black?" Contrary to before, each word was said coldly and mockingly, better to hear, better to condemn, "Because I know for a fact that you didn't manage to kill him. He got a away, minus, of course, a little finger; _not only _giving him an escape route, but also sealing _your own_ fate _as well as_ my own! Oh yes, you're definitely the winner in this little fiasco."

The only noise in the room was the resounding mock applause from Harry. Each hand clap seemed to have the effect of a physical slap on Black. On edge, Harry flopped back onto his chair, casting the mirror spell at Black with little thought, unable to stand the idea that Black could see him, thinking to calm down.

A moment later he cast a silencing charm on himself. Then he let himself breathe as harshly and deeply as he liked, he did refuse, however, to let himself be reduced to a sobbing mess. He angrily forbade moisture to gather in his eyes and forced the sobs back down into his gut. It was a moment longer before he had enough control of himself to wordlessly lift the silencing charm.

He drank in the silence.

"You... have every right to hate me." Black's voice was hesitant, mournful. Harry bit his tongue, not trusting himself to speak just yet, nor to look at the man. He had already revealed too much when he told Black that he knew Pettigrew was still alive.

Black seemed to take the silence as acquiescence to carry on talking, "I can't tell you how appalled I am with myself, how sorry that I've done this to you."

Harry's only action was to steeple his fingers, returning his gaze back to Black. His voice was starting to waver.

"You must understand-"

"Must I?" Harry echoed, yet again catching Black by surprise. There was a pause before the man continued.

"James and Lily were two of my closest friends, they were like family to me, more than family to me."

"They _were_ my family," Harry cut in quietly.

Black chose to ignore him and continued to growl out his explanation, "My thought processes when I realised that Peter had betrayed us all weren't exactly rational."

_~Stop acting like a sulking hatchling~_

Surprised, Harry looked down to find Rasp observing him from the arm of his chair. Harry bristled at the rebuke _~I am _not_ acting like a child!~_ he hissed out in response.

_~Your petulant manner and blatant ignorance of your surroundings disprove your statement~_

The snake put a stop to Harry's argument with a disapproving glare. Harry knew he was only arguing for the sake of argument, he knew Rasp to be right, both in his rebuke and to rebuke him.

_~If you want to find out something of use, stop trying to make him hate you~_

Harry made himself look into Rasp's unrelenting eyes, although the snake was not nearly as talkative and friendly as Chiana, his words were always worth listening to, in fact, it would be near disastrous not to listen to him.

_~Use them, don't let them use me~_ Harry said. The phrase had become something of a motto and a sign of understanding between the two of them. The snake nodded slightly and looked towards Black as if to say 'go on then.' Harry swallowed the urge to _blame_ and cause pain.

"I... understand where you must be coming from," Harry said softly, and delicately framing the word 'understand' whilst adding a note of hesitancy to his voice, as if he were coming to terms with Black's words.

Black's eyes seemed to pierce straight through the mirror, _~hide~ _Harry whispered to Rasp, who promptly disappeared into his sleeve. Once again, he cast the counter to his mirror charm and stood up.

"What do you want from me?" Black asked, he seemed completely crushed. Harry wasn't surprised, he himself was feeling the effects of such an emotionally aggravating conversation, and Black had had thirteen years in an Azkaban cell on top of that. It was a wonder he had retained any mental function at all.

Somehow, Harry knew that being somewhat honest with Black now would not only gain him a vital source of information now, but if he played his cards right, an incredibly powerful ally in the future.

"First, I simply wanted to make you pay for betraying my parents, but now?" he saw Black flinch, "I just want a family, a place where I _belong_. Where I don't have to hide," he met Black's eyes at that point. After a moment he saw the acceptance that he knew his words would induce.

He felt the room changing around him as he conjured up the feeling on home, comfort and luxury. The walls changed from a bare grey to being covered with ornate tapestries, furniture appeared out of nowhere as the room morphed into a sizeable apartment. The predominant colours were blue, green with tasteful hints of silver. The box surrounding Black disappeared and Harry absentmindedly wondered if he should have extracted an unbreakable vow before releasing Black from his confines.

That Black didn't rush for the door gave Harry a small modicum of relief.

"The Room of Requirement," Black stated, wonderstruck, as his eyes took in the room, "we used to think it was nothing more than a myth, James, Remus and I."

"You weren't given a trial," Harry stated, not wanting to waste the truth-telling atmosphere that they had created in the past half an hour, and hoping that Black would elaborate on his sentence.

The other man grimaced meekly at the fireplace that had appeared in one wall, "I think the ministry was overwhelmed by the sudden influx of accused death eaters being bought in when after the Dark Lord's demise. They didn't have time to go through all the proper procedures, besides, it didn't look like my guilt was questionable; there were dozens of witnesses, and only one bit left of Peter."

Harry wondered about that, "But Dumbledore must have known you were innocent, why didn't he do anything?"

"I doubt he was able to do much, the wizarding world was in chaos, and desperately wanted to put the war behind them," Black then looked to the ceiling, which Harry took to mean that he was not the only one the man was trying to convince with his argument, "besides, the change in secret keeper was a very last minute decision, I'm not even sure that Dumbledore knew that we had done it. He probably did think that I was the traitor, and not Peter."

Harry decided to keep his thoughts on Dumbledore to himself; it was obvious that Black, despite everything, still held an undue amount of respect and regard for the man.

"Do you still want to kill him?" he asked, slightly curious himself. Black looked up sharply.

"Do you?"

Well, that was a dangerous question.

"I want my parents to be avenged, I feel as if I at least owe them that."

Harry hoped that his answer was ambiguous enough not to alienate his... godfather. Black nodded his understanding.

"As do I, for failing them."

The room fell silent as Black contemplated Harry, and Harry contemplated Black.

"What... what was it like in Azkaban?" he asked, a slight childish lilt to his voice. As soon as the words had left his mouth, he felt Rasp tighten warningly around his upper arm.

_~Don't worry, I know what I'm doing~_ he reassured the snake quietly.

_~Good, because I don't~_ came the almost inaudible reply.

From what he knew about the man, he would have been amused at how easy it was to manipulate Sirius Black. But as it _was _Sirius Black, he was anything but amused. Black's whole body had stiffened and he was looking imploringly at Harry. Harry's face remained expressionless, and his lips sealed.

As he hoped, Black seemed to gather strength from Harry's Slytherin mask. His posture relaxed and his eyes softened from dread to curiosity.

"It was a bad time; I have no wish to burden you with the memory of it."

Harry allowed himself a small smile, the man had passed his first small little test. Perhaps having Black on his side, not as a friend, as Harry did not allow himself to have such things as friends, would not end in disaster after all. If the man relearned how to school his emotions and reclaimed his mind, Harry would even consider sharing some of his secrets in return for knowledge previously exclusive to the Black family.

"And how has the world treated you these past thirteen years?" Black asked, no longer a pathetic excuse for a man, but a Lord recovering from a horrific past thirteen years. The turnaround in questioning meant that the man was quick to recover, learn and adapt. Harry very lost himself: Sirius Black had once been a formidable opponent. He paused, pondering how to answer the question, what type of reaction he wanted and exactly how much to divulge.

Harry knew from various sources that his father, this man's former best friend had been somewhat of a joker. Well, that much was evident in their names: Prongs, Moony, Padfoot and Wormtail? So the most obvious, not to mention safest, thing to do was to emulate his father, but it wouldn't do to make Black think that he was carbon copy, Snape had already taught him the dangers of him and his father being perceived to be the same entity. He really didn't like being punished for somebody else's wrongdoings, especially if they occurred nearly a decade before he was born. So, considering that all accounts of James Potter and the Potter family agreed that they were all faultless paragons of light, he would hint at some of his darker tendencies.

"Well, I was raised in that same hellish orphanage you left me in, bullied right up to when McGonagall came to take me to Hogwarts." Harry opted for brutal honesty, little detail and speed, all indicative of someone who was rather laid back, or no longer cared, "I took control of my Gringotts account, realised I knew nothing of the wizarding world and took it upon myself to make sure I was well educated by the time I actually entered the school.

From there I, admittedly after a small blip at the beginning of first year, made sure that I kept myself in the shadows and head down as much as possible. I foiled the Dark Lord's attempt to retrieve the Philosopher's stone in my first year, oh and I learned basic occlumency and dark arts, the next year I arranged for the basilisk in the Chamber of Secrets to be vanquished and the memory of one Tom Marvolo Riddle to be permanently laid to rest, saving a first year in the process. During third year I made leaps and bounds in all fields of magic, Hogwarts curricular and not, as well as some small successes in wordless and even wandless magic. This year I've been roped into participating in the Tri-Wizard tournament, intended for sixth and seventh years, I'm still working on the last. I think that just about covers everything. Oh wait, I've done all that without people actually realising that I'm doing it, well... apart from this year I suppose."

Harry finished off his narrative with a matter of fact expression and a slightly excessive flourish. He kept his face serious and Black's eyes ogled, eyebrows retreated to his hairline and jaw refused to close.

_~Leave him at that child, you want to make sure he believes what you tell him, although telling him in the first place still seems foolish to me~_ the snake's discontent with not understanding his motives amused Harry slightly, but as always he noticed the ring of truth in his companion's words.

Taking advantage of Black's incapacity to talk, Harry changed appearances completely, straightening his back and removing all expression from his face, a picture of deadly seriousness.

"This room is probably the safest place for you at this moment in time. I can't tell you how foolish you were to come into Hogwarts itself, even if most of the staff would be distracted with the Yule Ball. The fact that you were caught by mere third and fourth year students is evidence enough of that. I implore you not to leave this room. See this as an opportunity to rest up and enjoy a true safe haven until you are recovered. I will send up an elf with food and restorative potions at regular intervals. Give him any requests you may have and I will act upon them as I see fit."

Harry's tone was non-negotiable and his eyes held a clear warning to obey his rules; he did not trust Black enough to not run straight to Dumbledore as soon as he left the room, especially with the secrets he had just revealed to him. He was effectively placing Black under house arrest, the house elf would double as a guard and Harry would be the gaoler. It was definitely a step backwards in gaining Black's trust, but it was a necessary one, and it wasn't as if Harry wasn't confident that he could recover the lost ground during the next meeting.

He didn't wait for Black's reply as he exited the room. He debated with himself for a moment before replacing an out of curriculum locking charm with the simple wish that the room would be inescapable for Black. He nodded in satisfaction as the door melted away, leaving behind solid stone. Just to make doubly sure, he placed several alarms around the walls: if Black got out, he would know about it.

"Dobby," he called out.

The elf appeared instantly, "Yes, Harry Potter," he said, giving a small bow.

"Make sure the inhabitant of this room is well looked after, he may require some potions, I'm sure you can identify which ones, as well as the usual necessities... food, drink, clean clothes. If he voices any requests to you I must ask that you pass them on to me."

"Dobby understands."

"Good, and Dobby," Harry called.

"Yes Harry Potter," the elf's voice was steady.

"I trust that we'll be keeping this to ourselves," he said with a friendly smile.

Dobby replied with a small, nearly feral, grin, "of course Harry Potter, it shall be Dobby's and yours's little secret."

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**A/N** Well.. don't expect an update that quick again, this one nearly killed me! But the muse struck and I had no option but to write. Thanks for reading, and feel free to review and/or get in touch. I love to hear your views!

I'm thinking of putting in a filler chapter in next (in the form of Harry talking more indepth about his life to Sirius (the sarcastic one in this chapter is meant to be a little precursor - Sirius will undoubtedly have lots of questions). It won't be necessary to the plot, but will clear up any questions and loopholes that you might have thought of. So, if anyone has anything they want explaining, please say.

Sorry for the massive note at the end..

apisci


	7. 6,5 An Account (optional)

**A/N **Well... this isn't actually a chapter (hence the 1/2) Its more for if you want a little bit more detail than the bits and pieces I've included in the story so far, I wouldn't say it was compulsory, **you can get away with not reading this** (I'm aware it's quite long). Its mostly from Sirius' POV and quite Sirius-centric, just to see how he would react to Harry's life and well... how he reacts to Harry. I did really enjoy writing this though :) Anyway, enough of my rambling! Enjoy...

Merry Christmas!

**Disclaimer **I do not own Harry Potter or his universe, no matter how many times I wish it, it will never happen. No copyright infringement intended.

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**6 ½. An Account**

Sirius had gone mad.

At least, that's what he had thought when he watched Harry exit the room with a grace that James had been incapable of mastering. He heart sank a bit at that. The two of them were so similar; Sirius had almost thought he'd died and was meeting with his best friend's spirit in the afterlife. His hair stuck up slightly at the back, just the way James' hair used to do. Every feature of Harry's face was identical to James', apart from those green green eyes, and if Sirius unfocused his gaze just a bit, his best friend was there. They had the same thoughtful pose, the same glimmer indicative of curiosity passed through Harry's eyes as it had once done James'.

He almost wept at the memory of it.

But he knew with great certainty that the young man who had presented himself before him was not James. Harry's lips curved with more of a twist than James' had when he smiled, as if he were merely humouring whoever he was smiling at, and, so minutely that Sirius had almost missed it, Harry's eyes sharpened whenever he heard something interesting with impossible readiness. There was also something about him, the way he carried himself. There was the calm sense of self assuredness, a trait that Sirius doubted the boy knew he possessed, that was not birthed from arrogance, and neither was it as egoistical or misplaced, as his father's had once been.

It almost seemed as if Harry was in a different field to James, to Sirius.

The apple had seemingly fallen very far from the tree.

Harry was not his father.

This is what Sirius had gleaned from their first meeting. He would try to find out something more substantial in this one.

The boy was sat in a plush black velvet high backed chair across from him, with trimmings in silver, a small glass table sat between them. Sirius was sat in a chair of his own, though one not of his own design, it too was high backed, but in Ravenclaw colours. Between the green and silver of Slytherin and blue and bronze of Ravenclaw, Sirius refused to use the Slytherin colours.

Sirius wasn't sure, as the boy kept his emotions expertly hidden, but he thought that Harry was watching him with avid interest, waiting for him to do something.

Sirius suddenly felt like a very small caged animal.

"You look better."

Sirius supposed that Harry had gotten bored with his inaction. The words made Sirius reflect, although Harry wasn't James, they shared some kindness. He didn't need to have let Sirius out, give him such a nice room, clothe him, feed him or heal him. So Harry was somewhere in between James and... What? How was he intending to finish that thought? Between James and a Slytherin? No, that didn't sit quite right with Sirius.

"I am: a shower, food and potions really does wonders for you," he answered, looking closely into those green eyes. He saw nothing.

"I'm glad," Harry stated after a brief pause. Sirius couldn't tell whether he was truly sharing his feelings or just going through the motions of polite conversation.

"You seem different today."

Sirius never had been one for tact.

He was rewarded by a slight upward tilt of Harry's lips, "I admit I was... on an emotional high last time we spoke. I must express my apologies; I will not appear as such before you again."

Sirius repressed the urge to scowl; it was quite difficult after thirteen years in a cell with nothing apart from your own thoughts for company. The few things that Harry had given away during their last meeting were relatively safe secrets; Sirius already knew that James and Lily had been betrayed by someone other than him, that Pettigrew was still alive. Wait, Pettigrew was still _alive,_ how had Harry known that? Sirius was sure that even Dumbledore wasn't privy to that titbit of information.

"How did you know that Peter was still alive?" the words were out of Sirius' mouth before he could think of a more delicate way to ask his question.

There was a very slight dilation of Harry's pupils, well, commiserated Sirius; at least he had taken the youth by surprise.

"I have my sources," Sirius tried to keep his face passive; it obviously didn't work as Harry smirked back at him, "and they shall remain my own."

Sirius sighed, that tone left for no argument on the subject. He settled into an uneasy silence, unsure as to why Harry was here. God he wanted a whiskey.

"Surely you are more curious about my past?" amusement shone unchecked in Harry's eyes, "being my _godfather_ and all."

Sirius shivered, partly because he couldn't imagine that someone like Harry needed such a figure in their lives, and partly due to the suddenly overwhelming desire to have a part in refining the boy in front of him. The boy had darker tendencies Sirius had decided, he could already feel the alluring power of the dark, there was so much more that, thanks to his status as a Black, he could teach the boy. Sirius could make him so much _better._

No, that was a side of himself that Sirius had put down years and years before he had entered Hogwarts. Harry needed to be guided towards the light Sirius thought to himself firmly.

"Or perhaps not," Harry's clear voice cut through Sirius' thoughts. Harry's eyes had darkened with both displeasure and caution, it was only then that Sirius realised that he had been silent far longer than the question had warranted. Harry looked as if he were about to get up and leave, Sirius had to placate him quickly if he wanted to find anything out.

"No, I beg forgiveness, whilst by physical appearances I look almost fully healed, my mind is still being affected by my spell in Azkaban." Maybe he had been a bit overzealous, Sirius thought as he looked into Harry's slightly curious eyes.

"I understand the difficultly of your situation, if you would like to continue this conversation at a later date then I'm sure I wouldn't mind the delay."

Dammit, how was Harry able to manipulate the conversation in such a way to make Sirius feel indebted to him? Sirius had no choice but to play his part, having played and lost that point without even realising it, "It's not that, I'm unused to..." Sirius sighed, "you said the orphanage was 'hellish'?" he said with a quirk of his eyebrow.

Harry visibly relaxed into his chair, preparing for a bit of storytelling, "It was, at least for me anyway. It started off well enough, although I _think_ my earliest memory is when a boy from a visiting family stamped on my feet for walking into him. Anyway, I don't remember feeling decidedly_ unhappy _at my lot in life. That lasted until I was about what... six, seven? Whatever, it started when a boy called Peter Williams started living with us.

"He was a bully; I could see that easily enough being bought up in a house full of children. So I tried to stay out of his way but, for reasons still unfathomable to me: I wasn't the smallest, clever or stupid, I didn't even wear glasses then, he came after me. It was the small things that children do, he walked into my room without permission, he stole scraps of food off my plate when no one else was looking, threw paper at me in class. All quiet little things that would make me seem weak if I tattled about it to anybody.

"He took it to mean that he could get away with more, so he did. Do more and get away with it I mean, by the time McGonagall came to meet me all the kids understood that Peter and I were in a state of open conflict. They had all sided with Peter by then, strange things always happened around Harry Potter. I know now that it was my accidental magic that caused drafts in other people's rooms, fixed things that they broke with the hopes that an adult would punish me, apparated me from a barred closet to my room.

"It did other things too, bought me clothes and a towel when Peter had stolen mine when I was in the shower, repaired my glasses when Peter had yet again stamped on them, floated down my things that had been thrown onto the roof. But no matter what I did, how hard I concentrated, I couldn't make it take revenge for me. So I hid other people's things in other people's rooms, put flower bombs above everybody's door, including my own to avoid suspicion, apart from Peter's, stole other, less valuable items, which they never found.

"All the children _knew _it was me, but they couldn't tell unless they were going to admit full on to bullying me. Ultimately, I think I won that battle, even though I put up with more beatings, more burning, more _punishments _and telling off from staff. I made them _squirm, _I made them more uncomfortable around me than they made me. It's only basic human instinct to not like what you don't understand."

Sirius watched Harry finish his speech with a darkly satisfied light in his eyes. It wasn't the worst upbringing in the world, but it certainly wasn't very good for someone with a responsibility like Harry's. Sirius could quite easily see how Harry could learn to hate muggles, although his last statement gave Sirius hope, he had said 'human', not 'muggle'. It was a small comfort though, Harry had looked delighted with the idea of putting people in their place.

"Burns?" he asked absentmindedly, mainly to fill the silence that had so irritated Harry earlier, "they set fire to you?"

Harry blinked once and pulled his collar down slightly, "cigarettes, I still can't get the damn scars to disappear," Sirius eye's locked onto a small, perfectly circular scar just above his godson's collarbone, he grimaced in sympathy.

"Disgusting muggle invention," he said distastefully.

"On the contrary," said Harry with a raised eyebrow, "I quite enjoy them."

Sirius did his best to look appalled.

Harry gave one short, sharp burst of laughter, "You can't defend yourself, they're easily better for you than pixie dust."

Sirius couldn't help but grimace. He, James and Peter had, against the advice of Remus, had become rather taken with the hallucinogenic substance sometime around sixth year. Until McGonagall had found out. Oh, that had been what Harry was hinting at, he realised belatedly.

Harry grinned at him when recognition flashed through Sirius' eyes, "the school records were very informative."

Harry had access to the school records? No, he had probably broken into them to do a bit of research about Sirius. The thought of it still put Sirius on edge. There were a lot of valuable secrets stored in –

"And I already know about Moony's 'furry problem' as you like to put it. He taught here during my third year actually, but that's a story for later."

Sirius had almost demanded that Harry explain himself before he realised the goad for what it was. Don't take the bait Padfoot.

"You said McGonagall met with you?" he asked instead, regaining control over himself.

Harry seemed to smile with fondness of the memory, "She did," he agreed, "I thought she was mad, the first time I saw her. A joke, some cruel prank that the other children had somehow planned, come to make me believe I was special and above them all. That I had a way out, I could finally leave them all. I thought they'd finally won, you know? Seen that what I wanted most was to just be away from them; obviously, I was less than kind to her.

"When I realised she wasn't lying to me, I was overjoyed. She took me to Diagon Alley, she showed me Gringotts and after that I told her to leave me to it. I went back in and saw to my account first of all, I also got the best explanation of the wizarding world a goblin could give me. The ensuing shopping trip would provide me with far more information. Even then I hated feeling needlessly ignorant and I already enjoyed reading history, so I bought a few extra volumes in Flourish and Blotts and got to reading. I knew about as much as the average first year Weasley when I entered school. That's the point at which I set myself the goal to make you suffer incidentally.

"I was sorted into Ravenclaw, I know you've been wondering, and quickly became the best in my year. I wasn't prepared for the amount of attention that being the best, and the boy-who-lived, apparently warranted me, I didn't like it either. Let's just say that wasn't an ideal place to be if you were hoping to research some particularly nasty spells to duel and punish a certain person with. I no longer wanted to be the best, but a sudden drop in grades would be even more brow raising.

"So I limited myself to curriculum spells, higher level curriculum spells mind you, while I researched a way to achieve my goals.

"I wasn't allowed to do this quietly or as quickly as I liked, unfortunately. Malfoy, whose hand of friendship I had declined moments before the welcoming feast, saw it fit to take up the reins that Peter had abandoned, there was also the strange Professor Quirrel, terrified to meet my gaze and reeking of what I know understand to be a dark aura. I tried my best to ignore or placate Malfoy and befriend Quirrel.

"A troll was let loose in the school on Halloween. I knew for a fact that another Ravenclaw girl, muggleborn called Hermione Granger, had been upset earlier in the day and had fled to a girl's bathroom in the area where the troll had been spotted. I don't quite understand why, but it felt like finding her was the right thing to do. She was lucky I did, I suppose she may have been second academically only to me she didn't have the instinct to fight. I killed the troll for her when I found it trying to squish her with its club.

"The next morning I saw Snape skulking around with a wounded leg, and it was only through a chance encounter that night that I overheard a conversation between him and Dumbledore. They were hiding the Philosopher's stone in Hogwarts, stupid idea if you ask me, that's why a certain corridor had been declared out of bounds for the year, and that Voldemort was trying to steal it. It doesn't take much to put two and two together. I knew that Quirrel was in league with Voldemort, and while I personally hold nothing against the man, I didn't particularly fancy the idea of him walking around again, mostly because you, as what I believed to be his faithful servant, would be much harder to reach if he were alive again. So I decided to stop him.

"So, I spent most of the year learning upper school spells, avoiding Malfoy, researching ways to make my drop in grades credible, trying my best to avoid attention and attempting to get Quirrel to trust me enough to find a way to stop him getting the stone. The first two were quite easy to achieve, but I made no progress whatsoever with the last. I realised later that it was actually because Voldemort was stuck on the back of Quirrel's head, surviving on unicorn blood.

"My researched paid off around halfway through the third term. I was in the restricted section when I came across a spell that witches and wizards of old used to cast on their children, or themselves, in times of war to stop others from trying to recruit them. The spell would superficially reduce the amount of magical power exhibited by a person for an extensive period of time, it works better the younger the subject is; in the same tome were ways to show evidence of brain damage. These spells were not without risks. But I was confident in my youth that I would perform them perfectly. Luckily for me, I did. I made it look like a flying accident and everybody fell for it. People would avoid my eyes after that, and Malfoy stopped with his feuding.

"It was near the end of the year when I finally gave up on Quirrel, luckily I had been grooming Weasley and two other boys in his house to get through the defences surrounding the stone. I'd been down just after Halloween, just to see what was there, I was pretty sure that even Weasley could probably get through it on his own, but I'd been feeding them information on devil's snare and how calming music was to animals throughout the year anyway. Word had gotten around that Weasley was a genius at chess and fancied himself as a Quidditch player. I wasn't worried.

I nudged them in the right general direction and they sorted the problem for me. One of the easiest things I'd ever done. They came out more or less in one piece and the stone was destroyed."

Sirius gaped, if it had been _anyone_ other than Harry talking to him, he would accuse them immediately of lying, but Sirius doubted that Harry was lying about this. Harry let him have a moment to ingest all the information that he had just been given.

"You were in the restricted section when you were _eleven_?" he asked rhetorically, thinking that saying the words aloud would somehow make it acceptable. He saw Harry nod his affirmative in his peripheral. He looked at Harry properly now.

"You 'restricted' yourself to curriculum spells until you were out of the limelight. When, exactly, did you start on... other subjects?" It seemed to Sirius that Harry was surprised and mildly disgruntled at that fact that Sirius hadn't questioned the credibility of his story a little more. He's gloating, Sirius realised, and he wants me to be in awe of him. He glanced at Harry's face again. There. That was nearly the same look that James Potter had given him when they had met in first year, except Harry's was more cautious, more controlled, not putting too much in so that he could cut his losses and stop at a given moment.

He wanted Sirius to like him.

As quickly as he saw the expression, it was gone again, the boy had mastered the Slytherin mask, "During my studies I realised the importance of mastering at least the basic concepts of each type of magic. As a Ravenclaw, I couldn't leave myself with just the basics. It took me a good part of two academic years before I was happy with the level of my knowledge. It was probably for the best, I hadn't realised how demanding the dark arts, among others, was on your magic."

Sirius had grown up a member of the house of Black, so he knew what Harry was telling him was more or less true. But he did see something that didn't fit.

"And mind magics?" he asked, referring to Occlumency.

Harry's mouth curved up in amusement again, "It quickly became apparent after a meeting that your _beloved_ headmaster could read minds. Naturally, I found a way to defend myself from it as quickly as possible."

"How did you know?" Sirius was feeling a bit uneasy. Dumbledore was a _master _legilimens; Harry shouldn't have been able to feel it when he slipped into his mind. Harry's eyes grew thoughtful.

"It felt the same as when I was sorted," a pause, "do you not feel it at all?"

Sirius shook his head, a negative. Curious that Harry would relate Dumbledore's probing to the sorting hat, not so strange, Sirius thought after a moment. Harry had apparently been in first year after all.

"Did you meet with the headmaster often?" It was also curious that Harry had taken what seemed to be an immediate disliking to the man. Especially given that Harry's interaction with the wizarding world had mainly been with McGonagall prior to entering Hogwarts.

"He first called me to his office at the end of the first week, under the pretence of welcoming me formally to the wizarding world and explaining what had happened to me when I was one. I felt him try to read my mind when he was telling me. I did the only thing I could think of doing, I feverishly thought the kind of thoughts that I hoped he would be expecting to find.

"They were the wrong ones apparently. He called me up to his office, still does, every couple of months or so. It's become somewhat of a sparring match. He normally calls me up whenever I've had a particularly arduous day or afternoon, usually after my potions lessons with Snape." Harry scowled a little with the name.

"Snivellous teaches potions?" Sirius asked, surprised. He had been fairly certain that the Snape he knew would never have resorted to teaching.

Harry nodded discontentedly, "I don't know why, it's obvious he hates it. He thinks I'm my father as well you know, I wish I didn't have to hide so I could brew a potion properly so I can prove him wrong."

Sirius refused to feel guilty for doing the same, but he did wince in sympathy for Harry, for the acts that Sirius and his father had done to Snape in their childhood, Harry must be paying dearly in memory of them. He was also surprised to know that Dumbledore would try to pry into the mind of one so young, and as new to magic as Harry had been. Dumbledore was the symbol of all that was light and good in this world, or he was supposed to be. Harry looked far too smug; doubtless he was following the same line of reasoning that Sirius was in his head. Sirius knitted his brows together; it was probably what he had planned since he heard the question. No, probably before he had entered the room.

Sirius was fed up with Harry Potter thinking that he was above him. His mood turned dark, he wanted Harry knocked down a peg or two, and then he wanted him gone.

"You said when you entered Hogwarts you knew about as much as the average Weasley, how much would you say you knew now?"

The boy in question took a second before he mused out loud, "Generally? Not as much as Dumbledore, nor as much as Binns about Goblin wars, but definitely more than the average Weasley," he showed his teeth when he smiled at Sirius, "Does that answer your question?"

Harry knew that it didn't, Sirius could see that, "you know as much as the history books tell you," he said with a hint of spite. He was satisfied as the grin faded.

"Perhaps," said Harry mysteriously, but they both knew it was a weak defence, how could Harry know _more_, books were his only source of information.

Sirius did his best imitation of his cousin Bellatrix's leer and refused to say anything more. Let Harry know that he wasn't without character, that he didn't want him there.

His expression seemed to have the adverse effect on Harry, whose eyes shone with dark mirth and lips curled in a pleased way. He stood up suddenly, abrupt wasn't the word to describe the grace with which Harry moved.

"Another time then, Black," he said quietly, almost seductively, before walking out of the room. The door melted away behind him. The aforementioned man stared at the empty wall where it had been.

Sirius had gone mad.

x ~ x ~ x

It had been weeks since Harry had last talked with Black.

He sighed as he put an abysmally vague, not to mention incorrect, two foot essay on the effects of wormwood in an array of different potions. He consoled himself with a conjured image of Snape's sneer and imagined the professor rubbing his temples as he unwillingly tried to interpret Harry's scrawl. It was only a small act of revenge, but it helped to console Harry just that little bit.

Snape was the only one of the professors to still be setting homework. All the others had stopped in consideration for the second task being just two days away. It would be the best time to go after Pettigrew, Harry had decided. The whole school would be out to watch the show.

While the other champions had been running around trying to make sense of the golden egg they had rescued from the first task, Harry had been running around in the middle of the night, trying to find a spell that would create a doppelganger to take over from him during the task. He was confident that he would be able to face anything that the damn tournament could throw at him, or at least, at his doppelganger.

Harry was waiting for the rest of the student body to fall asleep so he could make his customary trip to the restricted section; he was in his dorm, preferring it to the louder atmosphere of the common room. The others in his year apparently still felt awkward around him, as he was always left to his devices. Tonight was no exception.

"Harry Potter."

Harry looked up, curious as to Dobby's appearance. He nodded at the elf to go ahead.

"Mr. Black is requesting youses presences."

That made Harry pause; he was used to the man asking for books, newspapers and sometimes even a stiff drink or two. He hadn't been expecting Black to ask for him personally. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed Dobby disappear again. He sank back into his chair, one leg over the other. How... curious. He steepled his fingers together and cast a dark look towards his potions essay before rising out of his chair, casting a disillusionment charm upon himself and slipping out of the common room.

Talking to Black would not be a bad way to waste the next couple of hours.

x ~ x ~ x

Sirius was nervous.

It had been a couple of weeks, and Harry had yet to deny him anything. But he still wondered whether the young man would actually turn up.

His head turned with the sound of an opening door. He let out a small sigh of relief when the familiar face of James – no _Harry – _appeared through the portal. The boy spared him a glance, noting his position in the same chair he had occupied during the last meeting. A chair appeared opposite him and Harry sat himself down on it. A tense silence filled the air.

Sirius broke it first, "You're not curious as to why I called you?"

Harry gave him a knowing look, "I'm more curious to know why you've waited _this long_ to request my presence."

Either Harry really was impatient, or he had been completely thrown by Sirius' request.

"Care to finish your delightful tale?" he answered, thinking he understood most of Harry's earlier account of his life and now he wanted to know the rest of it.

Harry's eyes lit up, "You're not asking questions about Pettigrew?"

"That is for another time, I want to know who you are before anything else happens."

"And as far as I can see, you haven't tried to escape yet," the suspicion was plain to see.

Sirius did wonder: why hadn't he escaped yet? Why hadn't he even tried? It wasn't like him to just accept his imprisonment. Well, he hoped that Azkaban hadn't made him so compliant. It took only a look in Harry's direction to understand.

The boy fascinated him. He who was so like his father, and yet his opposite. The ice to James' fire, the sky to his earth, the north to his south.

The dark, to his light.

There was no denying it, if you knew what you were looking for, and Sirius did, growing up in the house of the Blacks: Harry's power was aching to serve the dark. Even if he hadn't fully committed himself to it, Sirius wasn't even sure that the boy was aware of it. And for some strange reason, Sirius found he didn't mind. In fact, he wanted Harry to accept the dark, and he himself wanted to follow.

He pondered this realisation, why would he want to follow the dark? He had spent most of his life running from it: all those awkward silences with his family, running away from home, getting sorted into Gryffindor_. Befriending James Potter._ Surely it hadn't been futile, an immature act of defiance? No, it was what Sirius had wanted to be, in servitude to the light; that was the reason he had been struck off the Black family tree. Until he met Harry.

"I'm curious," he admitted. He saw the boy's pupils dilate slightly with surprise, then constrict with suspicion, "It's true, I want to know exactly _what _you've grown up to be."

The last statement seemed to appease Harry, who nodded slightly, "Now that you've seen that I'm not my father."

Sirius didn't reply, Harry was simply justifying his earlier explanation, and quite probably reminding Sirius of the same fact. As if he needed reminding.

"It didn't take me long to get tired of the Dursleys, that's where Dumbles sent me to live after first year by the way. They were loud, obnoxious, petty and so _weak _compared to me. I simply told them the natural order of things. They left me alone for most of the school holiday.

"When I arrived back at Hogwarts it seemed as if Quirrell had left and Dumbledore had hired the idiot Lockhart to teach us Defence. I couldn't stand him; he was like the Dursleys, less cruel, but every bit as ignorant. I thought it quite fortunate that I had covered all of second year defence beforehand; he only seemed interested in teaching us about himself.

"It took a while, but things eventually started happening, things that shouldn't happen. We found out just before Christmas that the Chamber of Secrets had been opened, Filch's cat had been petrified. I was perfectly content to sit back and watch the scene unfold, then it started getting ridiculous, after a few more students had been petrified good old Dumbles decided that it would be best to have teachers escort us between lessons, to and from meals, and for us never to leave our common rooms otherwise. It got worse after Weasley's little sister had been abducted and taken to the chamber; it was a lot harder to sneak out at night, even with some of the concealing spells that I shouldn't have known. The risk eventually grew too great.

"There was enough evidence in front of my nose for me to realise that it was the work of a Basilisk. It took me considerably longer for me to locate the entrance to the chamber. I had maintained my friendship with the Granger girl after the troll incident, though I full well know that she stuck by me due to pity and some misplaced sense of debt. It was useful though, she had become friends with the very same trio that I had led to the philosopher's stone the year before. They saw themselves as big shot saviours of the school and seemed keen to maintain that image. Naturally, I indulged them. A few innocent little comments for Granger to overhear got her on the scent of the Basilisk; though she did managed to get herself petrified _before_ she could tell her Gryffindor friends.

"A note written in a perfect imitation of her handwriting set that straight though. A few hints about why the groundskeeper Hagrid had been taken away; did you know that _he _was the one the staff had first suspected fifty years ago when the same thing happened? Anyway, ridiculous as that was, the other three learnt that when the chamber had been opened fifty years previously, a muggleborn had been killed. A muggleborn who's ghost still haunts the girl's bathroom on the second floor. I... arranged for the chamber to open when they arrived there, it was quite amusing to that they had dragged along Lockhart. The rest was just blind luck on their part. I heard they saved the Weasley, somehow obliterated Lockhart, killed the basilisk, shame that really, and got rid of another artefact.

"I don't know what else they discovered down there, their memories of the incident have been locked away by another, probably Dumbledore, and I haven't yet managed to get any of them to willingly tell me what actually happened."

Harry didn't bother hiding his scowl at when he uttered the last sentence, Sirius noted. He didn't bother questioning the story, Harry had already proved how remarkable he was, and... it made sense to Sirius; following on from the rest of Harry's life, the year had seemed comparatively dull.

"Are you still friends with the muggle-born?" he asked and was quite proud of the completely blank look from Harry.

"We're more like... acquaintances now. Her constant mothering got annoying, so I just made every situation awkward for her. She eventually gave up."

"And what of the 'Gryffindor three'?"

Harry blinked, as if the idea had never even occurred to him, "The golden trio?" he said, sneering, "They don't like me any more than I like them. I think it had something to do with Granger. Maybe they feel angry at me on her behalf for some perceived wrong. I think it's more to do with the fact I used to be better than them, and then I wasn't." Harry smiled at Sirius, "Don't tell me you haven't noticed that Gryffindors make excellent bullies, especially to those who are different. I know how you four were with Snape."

Sirius grimaced uncomfortably, that had certainly hit the spot. The sting of guilt was amplified as he felt what the Marauders had done to Snape was echoing through time to what this 'golden trio' was doing to Harry. At least Snivellous hadn't had to worry about an irate teacher making life miserable for him on top of their dispute. He looked to Harry again, admiring the way that Harry's smile didn't seem strained, dark and forbidding yes, but not strained.

"How did you find the chamber?"

Harry smiled, it was almost in fondness, "I had help from an incredibly intelligent, and often overlooked, first year member of my house. A girl named Luna Lovegood. Most people think she's mad, I realised that there was some truth to her logic. She has a knack for understanding magic, though it comes in the form of imaginary creatures talking to her."

"Lovegood? As in, whose mad father runs the _Quibbler?_"

Harry nodded, he looked pleased that Sirius had recognised the name, "The very same." Well, that was unexpected. He hadn't expected that Harry would want to socialise with the Lovegoods.

"How did _you_ open the chamber?" Sirius asked abruptly, the question had suddenly cut through his line of thought.

"I didn't," replied Harry tartly, "and that's all I'll say on the matter."

"I thought only the heir of Slytherin had the power to open-"

"I said," this voice was commanding and held an unvoiced threat, "that was all I will say on the matter."

Sirius sat back, ignoring the urge to apologise, and held Harry's gaze for a few seconds. He wasn't getting anywhere; Harry had the advantage.

"You had started dark arts within this year?" he asked, mainly to take Harry's mind off the previous question. Harry nodded his affirmative. He couldn't shake the feeling that Harry was hiding something _big_ from him. He was, after all, divulging in every secret other than this one.

"Do go on."

"My third year was comparatively dull." Harry started without pause, catching Sirius slightly by surprise, "Since Lockhart had been reduced to the state of an excitable toddler, really, he wasn't much more to begin with, Dumbledore had hired one Professor Lupin." Sirius felt his eyes widen slightly at that, "he was a good teacher, the best I'd had actually. In fact, I think that he managed to make his lessons enjoyable for everyone. I would have found it enjoyable too, if he hadn't consistently been watching me, giving me indiscernible looks, asking me to demonstrate and so on. So instead of enjoying his teaching, I had to concentrate on not letting my character slip. I'm pretty sure that Dumbledore had told him of my 'incident' in first year, so he apparently remained unconvinced and in a small state of denial.

"I got a rest from him a few days of each month. Though he was swapped out for Snape, I'm not sure whose company I preferred. Snape is a surprisingly good defence teacher, if you're interested. But he was overly intent on teaching us about werewolves. Tie that together with the knowledge that Lupin was always missing during and around the full moon, and that his boggart was a full moon, I'd say it was pretty obvious that our defence professor was, in fact, a werewolf.

"Well, near the end of the year I was well into my studies of the dark arts, as well as a bit of the advanced forms of most other subjects. I left divination and care of magical creatures well alone. I was very well versed in potions at that time, so I always noticed a strange smell whenever I entered the dungeons just before the full moon. It wasn't any combination taught at Hogwarts. I deduced that Snape was also making some potion to tame the wolf, as it were, that would keep Lupin's status as a werewolf hidden.

"I think, it was becoming trickier to hide the lingering dark magic from Lupin, he seemed able almost to smell it. I suppose that comes with him being a dark creature. He was also becoming a bother, always asking me inane questions, summoning me to his office for chats about my parents. He told me the most about my parents. Curious that, don't you think? That a professor introduced to me in my third year in the magical world told me more of my parents than the head of the order which they died for. Dumbledore barely mentioned them, telling me only of their sacrifice and what that should mean to me and the rest of the wizarding world. Up until then, I knew more of goblin wars than of my parents.

So I may or may not have 'accidentally' let slip that the man was a werewolf to some of the more loose tongued members of my house. He left at the end of the year, securing my safe study of the dark arts for this year, or it was supposed to. I don't know how he did it, but Dumbledore made the Tri-wizard tournament happen this year... and made me a part of it. Now I barely have time between lessons, preparation, the actual tasks and the hordes of extra people in the school to carry on my independent studies."

The pause was long enough for Sirius to realise that Harry had finished his account. He raised an eyebrow, "Hordes of extra people?"

Harry's eye twitched in annoyance, "More people ogling me, watching me, making Weasel and Malfoy more jealous of my 'status'," he sighed before brightening again, "he's quite clever actually, Malfoy, and Granger too, they both figured out Lupin as well. It was obvious why Granger hadn't said anything, but I don't know about Malfoy. He's quite intriguing the more I think about it."

Sirius startled, Harry found the son of Lucius Malfoy _intriguing_? And Dumbledore had told Harry practically nothing of his parents, apparently, the urge to follow Harry was growing stronger.

"Now that I've heard your story, what do you want from me?" he asked, curious.

Harry smiled at him, "Sirius Orion Black: up until a few weeks ago, my whole life has revolved around killing you. I now find myself caring very little as to what actually happens in your life."

It was a lie. Sirius knew it had to be a lie, if he truly didn't care, then Sirius wouldn't be here. He'd be out in the world, making a life for himself, or he could be back in Azkaban, he could have been kissed. The man shuddered at the thought. Soulless. It would be a miserable existence, if you could feel misery if you were kissed.

The ploy was a clever one, subtly telling the truth, hidden by an untruth. Harry just didn't know what to do with him, but was fully preparing himself to push Sirius away.

Well.

Sirius wouldn't let him.

It was a snap decision, not really a decision if Sirius was honest about it. It was the _only _thing he could do. The only thing that he would let himself do. It's what he had wanted to do since he had met him, if only he had listened.

There was a sense of _rightness_ about his next words and a peace settled in the room after he had uttered them. For the first time, all the tortured voices, of Lily, James and everyone else that had died during the war, they were all quiet. All content. Sirius reflected that it was his own entire mind, the voices were his conscience, his soul, his destiny; and to them, he had finally done right by.

"You may not know what you want of me, but I know what I want of you. I know you are not your father: you are no one but yourself.

"I may not ever understand all of you, but I know what I do is _right_: Harry James Potter, I will follow you to the ends of this earth, and then beyond it."

* * *

**A/N **Gasp! When I started writing this little filler I didn't expect _that _to happen! Anyway, I hope that cleared up any questions you've had about Harry's past. If you have any more please please please tell me and I will do my best to answer them in following chapters! :) I hope that Sirius wasn't completely OOC, but it's fair to say he's gunna be a little different than he is in the books. Sharing is caring!

Watch this space...

apisci


	8. 7 Doubled Efforts

**A/N **So, it's been a while right? I even had to re-read it so I knew where I'd gotten up to! Oops... Thank you to everybody who stuck with me, I do always enjoy reading your reviews. As I said in the description, this fic is _eventualy slash_... so just stay patient a little longer! I'm hoping to get our favourite dark lord back within the next couple of chapters. I had a lot of writer's block when typing this one up, so forgive me for the times when it might not flow properly! Also un-beta'd.

**Disclaimer **I own the plot only, I suppose I can't really change the fact that JKR already owns the Potterverse...

_~Parseltongue~_

* * *

**7. Doubled Efforts**

Harry's eyes opened and swiftly landed upon the relaxed form of Rasp and Chiana at the foot of his bed. Said eyes brightened with anticipation.

_~Today's the day.~ _

_~That it is young one, now get up and stop wasting it,~ _Rasp hissed back at him. Though Harry could tell the snake was excited. This had been the day that his magical life had been building up towards.

Today was the day that the traitor Peter Pettigrew would pay.

Looking out of the window Harry noticed that it was looking to be a beautiful day, it was almost a shame he would be stuck indoors for most of it. He got up quickly, showering and getting dressed and ready for the day in ten minutes. Everybody else he shared his dorm with were still lying in bed, their relaxed breathing calmed Harry to some extent. He sat calmly back on his bed, smiling at his two familiars now by his pillow. He pulled his holly wand out of his robe pocket, with a flick, the drapes surrounding his bed closed, a few more flicks and Harry's usual charms were in place; no one would be able to hear him, or feel the change in magical energy around him. He took a deep breath to steady himself.

He was ready.

_"Creare duplicata corpus!" _Harry uttered the spell barely at a whisper and watched, enraptured, as slowly, a small stream of silvery mist floated from the tip of his wand, forming a miniature hydra with too many heads for him to count. They all seemed to quarrel with themselves for a moment, before two of them surged forwards eagerly whilst the rest faded away. Harry made sure to stay very still as they drew nearer, not even flinching as they bit him; one on his wrist, the other in the crook of his neck. Rasp and Chiana both hissed and bared their fangs, but Harry put up his other hand to tell them not to interfere.

The fangs had pierced his skin for less than a second before they withdrew. Harry held his breath as both heads distorted and lost their form, becoming an ethereal mist that started swirling faster and faster in a sphere about the size of Harry's head. As it gained speed, it became more solid, bigger and blotches of colour started appearing on the surface. Harry and his familiars observed silently as Harry's copy was made. It took about a minute before Harry's doppelganger's body was fully formed. The snakes remained silent as the two Harry's examined each other, and both did well to hide their discomfort when Harry and... Harry Two simultaneously broke out into grins.

"You'll need a wand, luckily I collected a –"

"Spare from Filch's store, currently in your left inside pocket." Two held out his hand expectantly. Harry gave him the wand, then cast a disillusionment charm on himself with his own wand. Two cancelled the charms around the bed.

Harry held out his arm for both of the snakes. Chiana gratefully slithered into a pocket that was bigger on the inside, Harry had had to install it when Chiana began to double, then quadruple in size, while Rasp still fitted in his original place under his robes near the crook of his neck. The two Harry's locked eyes again before abruptly turning aside. Two continued to sleep in Harry's bed, while Harry stealthily snuck out the door and stalked out into the corridors.

_~What is your plan?~ _Harry felt his ears perk at the sudden sound. He smiled as he turned another corner, map in hand.

_~To hide,~ _he said simply, laughing inwardly when he heard a cross between a hiss and a cough from within his robes. If a snake could snort, that would be it.

_~I should have known, why do all of this now? Why not just before the challenge starts?~_ Rasp hissed in Harry's ear.

There was no answer from the teen, as Harry let the question hang heavy in the air. Instead, he set about storing the Marauder's map in his top left hand pocket, adjusting his cuffs, turning over a collar and smoothing out imaginary wrinkles in his clothing. He was standing before the room of requirement before he finally answered, sweeping a hand across his head to make sure that not even a hair was out of place.

He spoke loudly, so that his hisses echoed down the corridor, _~to see if the dog wants to play cat and mouse.~_

Harry could sense the slight bafflement with his melodrama, snakes tended to think that such displays were quite pointless, unless it was to intimidate an opponent. They humoured him nevertheless.

Harry opened the door as he would have done any other day despite his previous words. No grand entrance, no sweeping elegance, blinding light or grandeur; he just turned the handle and walked in. His face was a mask, one he sometimes wore for a split second before leaving Dumbledore's office, just long enough to see the annoyance pass through the old man's eyes. It was the cold Slytherin mask with amused, laughing eyes and the barest of smirks, full of arrogance and satisfaction; a mask that Harry had created as a mockery of Dumbledore's own.

However, when his eyes fell upon the sleeping form of his godfather, slumped in a chair and open book in his lap, his face softened slightly. He considered the man, falsely accused, wrongly imprisoned and loyal friend of his father.

_~You are beginning to care for him~ _hissed Rasp sharply, disapprovingly, sensing Harry's hesitation.

_~And why should he not?!~ _replied Chiana forcefully before Harry could think to answer. Her silver-white head poked out of his robes and turned to glare at Rasp. Rasp shifted so that he could eye the female from high above.

_~He is the very same one that abandoned Harry. He should not be so quick to trust him!~_

_~If you had your way he would not trust at all!~_

_~As it should be. Trust makes him weak!~ _And if a snake could shout, that would be it. Harry stood still, uneasy as his two familiars glared menacingly at each other, heads mere millimetres apart. It was only the second time that they had ever disagreed with such ferocity, and this time it was different. They weren't quarrelling about Harry's safety; it wasn't something he could compromise on either, like the Chamber of Secrets had been. They were arguing about his feelings. And this time, Harry didn't agree with either of them.

_~I am still here you know,~ _he said icily _~and whatever is decided about Black, it shall be _me _who decides it!~ _Harry's tone of voice was commanding, and both snakes could only hold the stare a few seconds longer before they succumbed to the expectation of silence, if not peace, between them. Harry threw his irritation to the back of his mind, he wasn't going to allow anything to spoil his mood, and felt them withdraw into their usual places.

Silently deciding to ignore his familiars, he slammed the door shut behind him, hoping the loud noise would wake up Black for him. The man woke with a start, but impressively, he managed to catch the book that had been on his lap before it hit the floor. Harry noted this and waited a short while for the man to recover himself.

"You have good reflexes," he said, matching his voice to his face. Black didn't move his head, but Harry caught his eyes frantically searching the room before zoning in on Harry. Harry smiled as he watched Black visibly relax, he then smoothly walked over to his customary chair and sat.

"Worryingly, you are very good at sneaking up on me," said Black, a hint of humour in his voice.

Harry resisted the barb that was on the tip of his tongue, opting for something a bit more endearing, he _had_ planned to make an effort with Black: "If you were tired, you should have slept on the bed. You are no doubt suffering from an aching back and a sore neck from your nap," he chided softly.

Black smiled absently before groaning as he stretched his back, "I hadn't noticed until you mentioned it." Harry smiled wryly in response.

"What were you reading? Something interesting?" he asked, nodding towards the book in the older man's hand.

Black glanced down at the front cover of the book, and Harry couldn't help but follow his gaze and raise an eyebrow when he caught the title.

"7 _Moste Famous Wizards: Bright or Barmy?"_ he said, slightly surprised. Black seemed to shift guiltily in his chair, "Dumbledore?" he queried gently.

Black nodded slowly, Harry felt a thrill – was that happiness? – pass through him. A step away from Dumbledore was a step towards Harry, no matter how small.

"I wanted a different view and..." he trailed off uncomfortably.

"That is one of the very few books that can give it to you," Harry supplied. Black lifted his head, "although, personally, I have found it to be largely inaccurate."

Black put the book on the table.

"Then what _is _accurate?"

Harry smiled smugly at the man, "Me, of course." The smiled faded, "but, I understand that you wouldn't want to base your opinions of the man through me. I am a biased source after all. Just remember that _he _was the one who should have demanded you have a trial, _he _was the one who let you rot in that disgusting place for thirteen years, and that it was _he _who gained your trust, your loyalty. And that it was mostly for _him _that your lives were ruined."

Harry's speech was met with a moment of silence.

"You have a very low opinion of him, and I disagree with you, what we did during the war we did of our own accord. We weren't innocent little lambs being led to slaughter."

Harry's insides turned cold, angry that even now, Black wouldn't see Dumbledore for what he really was. That he couldn't see that Dumbledore had made them all exactly what he wanted them to be.

"He befriended you; my parents, you and Lupin. Ever since you were all sorted into _Gryffindor_ he looked upon you with kind eyes, _approving _eyes. Don't you see?" Harry looked imploringly at Black, "He gave you all you ever wanted from an adult: approval, kindness, and to recognise you for who you were. He knew what you wanted, and he gave you all of it."

Black remained unconvinced. Harry resisted the urge to pinch the bridge of his nose. Though he did sigh heavily and lounge back against his chair. He did note that Black was now looking doubtfully at the book on the table. Harry felt an ounce of satisfaction; perhaps he was getting through to the man.

"Anyway, I didn't come here to discuss Dumbledore," Harry said after a moment's silence, it would be better to let the man stew over his words when Harry had left the room, "I was curious to hear about your views on pest control."

Black looked confused for a few seconds before his eyes lit up with a menacing fire, "You know where he is."

Harry smiled darkly, "I know where he is."

x ~ x ~ x

It had been... little more than blind luck that had led Harry to Pettigrew. Well, if you didn't count the cheating. It wasn't his fault really, he kept telling himself, that he had seen Pettigrew morph into his animagus form in Bla- Sirius' memories. He could feel Chiana's exasperation through their bond. To her, it didn't matter how Harry had got the information. It didn't matter than Harry had used legilimency on Bl-Sirius; the man should have protected his mind better if he didn't want anybody seeing into it.

Harry felt guilty though, he had used legilimency on other students, the ones he didn't care about, which was all of them. But he could help but feel a profound sense of wrongness when he thought about using it on Black. His father's friend, his godfather, his... follower? Ridiculous, he wasn't going to be like Voldemort. But what did that make Sirius, a friend? He could help but sneer at the word, after countless years of thinking on the stupidity of the word. Harry mentally pinched himself, it wasn't as if it was important, how he thought of Sirius.

No, focus on the task at hand.

It was early afternoon, and the second task was just about to begin. The castle was empty (if one discounted the house elves labouring in the kitchens) apart from two males making their way towards Gryffindor tower. Harry had brewed a polyjuice potion in the past month; Harry was in the small body of Colin Creevey, with Sirius as his 'younger brother'. They had both taken just enough to disguise them until they got into the tower, Harry had no intention of staying in someone else's body for any longer than absolutely necessary. He would have preferred to use glamours, but they we so much more easily detected. He had told Sirius his plan for the day, which basically involved Sirius staying quiet until they got to Pettigrew, and staying quiet after his capture until they got back to the safety of the room of requirement. Later tonight, when everybody would be curled up warm in their beds, Harry and Sirius would move him to the Shrieking Shack. That had been Sirius' idea, outside Hogwart's wards (so they could use decidedly less-than-light spells), abandoned, and a place where screams were _expected_ to be heard. Time to make the 'shrieking shack' earn its name.

Harry felt a tug on the hem of his sleeve, oh right. He looked up at the portrait of the Fat Lady, putting on a bashful, innocent and slightly embarrassed look on his face when the portrait looked down her nose at him.

"Isn't there a _tournament_ or something that you should be watching going on _out there?_" she said scathingly. Harry hid his smirk, looking down at the floor and forcing a blush to stain his cheeks. So the lady was jealous because she couldn't see the show?

Harry gently held the camera that was hanging around his neck, the one that Creevey was almost as famous as him for carrying around, "I – I forgot the lens you see, f-for my camera. I was in such as rush to get there on time that I simply forgot to p-pick it up." He did his best not to overdo the act.

"And I _suppose_ you want to go in and get it _now_, do you?" The lady really wasn't very good at hiding her jealousy. Harry had faked a hopeful smile and was partway through opening his mouth to speak again when the lady continued on, "Well, you won't get in without a _password_, do you think I'm so easily moved? Oh no! I will continue to do my job with the highest degree of professionalism whilst all you brats get to go out and have _fun _watching a _tournament_. Albus will not find fault with me!" she huffed, turning her head aside in an affronted manner.

He could feel Sirius shaking with laughter, thankfully hidden from the Fat Lady's view behind him, at her display.

"Err.. Babbity?"

The Fat Lady looked sharply round at Harry, who hoped that he had picked out the right password out of Ginny Weasley's head earlier in the day.

"Oh very _well,_ then! Go in if you must!" she declared in a dramatic voice, swinging open to reveal the entrance to the Gryffindor common room. Harry did his best not to physically shield his eyes from the sickly rich colour scheme of the room. Sirius let out a small sigh of contentment. It was all Harry could do not to glare outright at him. The cushy sofas surrounding the fireplace, the chessboard over to one side, the numerous Quidditch memorabilia which took up a whole wall, all of it disgusted Harry. It was exactly how he expected Gryffindors to be: garish, boastful, rowdy and lazy.

"Where do the fourth year boys dorm then?" He asked impatiently, not wanting to spend much more time in the brightly coloured common room.

Sirius didn't answer in favour of walking straight past Harry and disappearing up a spiralling flight of stairs. Harry hesitated for the briefest moment before following the older man. The appeared in a circular room with beds placed around it, headboards against the wall, nearly none of them had their drapes closed, which left Harry free to scrunch his nose slightly at the state of the unmade bed. He made sure that his always looked as if he had never slept there, using magic of course, just in case anybody happened to open his drapes, repelling ward or no. It paid to be cautious.

The map, irritatingly, didn't show the actual layout of any if the school's house areas, Harry wondered whether that was because the Marauders didn't know the others well enough to plot (and they didn't need one for Gryffindor tower) , or if Hogwarts had intervened somehow, or maybe they had left them out because of some sort of misplaced fairness. Logically, it would be easier to just ask Sirius, but he hadn't told his godfather that he was in possession of the map lest Sirius get the idea that he was the same as his father.

Sirius was looking at him, from his own body once again.

Oh, Harry hasn't given him a wand. He swiftly drew his own and ignored Sirius' amused half-smirk in his direction. He laid the familiar holly on the palm of his hand and whispered, "Point me Peter Pettigrew."

The wand span around on his hand and he could have sworn that he had heard a little terrified squeak from the area around a particularly scruffy bed.

Three things happened at once. Harry's wand stopped spinning, Sirius morphed into a giant black dog, and a rather large rat made a dash for the staircase.

Harry gave a small sigh before grasping his wand, using magic to slam the door shut before the rat could get out. Sirius leapt down the middle of the room, snarling and with flecks of spittle dropping from the corner of his mouth. The rat froze with fear at the sight of the enraged dog bounding towards him, giving Harry just enough time to wordlessly shoot a stunner at him and yell, "FINITE INCANTATEM," at the dog.

Harry had caught Sirius mid-leap and the man found himself unable to stop himself crashing to the ground in an inelegant heap. He let out a small groan once the dust had settled. Harry scowled at the form of the slumped man before turning to the rat.

"Mobilicorpus," he said quietly, the form floated gently in the air. Harry wasn't very well going to _touch _the thing, "get up," he said, not kindly, to Sirius, not waiting to see if Sirius was standing before heading back down the stairs.

Sirius' eyes flashed briefly with anger at having been forced out of his animagus form and then _ordered _to do something, by a teenager no less! His heartbeat calmed when he remembered that this teenager was special. This teenager was his godson, whom he would do anything for; including not ripping that damned _traitor, _currently floating behind Harry, into small pieces and feeding him to real rats.

He took a calming breath and strode after Harry, emptying the sickly sweet contents of a vial in the pocket of his robe. He shuddered uncomfortably as his body shrank. When he appeared in the common room he found Harry waiting for him in a similar state. He couldn't help the growl that escaped his lips when his eyes alighted on the rat once again.

The look Harry shot him made sure he didn't do it again.

x ~ x ~ x

"Let me kill him," Sirius asked for the third time in the past twenty minutes.

Peter Pettigrew, _Peter Pettigrew, _in his _actual body_ was currently lying curled up in a terrified ball in a box similar to the one that Harry had created for Sirius.

Harry had made a _few _alterations to it though.

Harry snorted maliciously, "Really," he sighed, "you have no imagination."

Sirius gritted his teeth. Pettigrew whimpered in his position, though not from Harry's words. The box had a silencing charm on it. The inner walls still acted as mirrors, though they could both see in.

Harry's eyes were fixed on Pettigrew as he peeked through the fingers in front of his own eyes, there was a sadistic twist to his lips. He would make Pettigrew suffer: firstly, for daring to betray his family, his supposed friends, and secondly, for framing Sirius. Though he would let Sirius get his own revenge.

The most notable difference to the prison, Harry supposed, was the darkness within it. It was a perpetual night-time, but with just enough light to allow Pettigrew anything that the boggart in there with him became. The second difference was, well, the boggart. Harry would have preferred a dementor, but where was he meant to get one of those? The boggart was good enough for such a weak minded individual.

Harry would have clapped his hands like a small child as Pettigrew let out a terrified shriek, backing up and attempting to claw his way out of the box, tears streaming down his face.

"Avis," he said, as if caressing the word. Numerous tiny crows leapt from his wand, passing through the sides of the box as if they weren't there, "Pugna."

The birds turned violent very quickly, screeching and turned on Pettigrew, who just wailed even harder, hopelessly trying to swat away the little black birds in the darkness that pecked and clawed. Soon there was blood covering every inch of visible skin of the _thing._

"STOP IT! I'LL DO ANYTHING!" screamed the victim.

Harry grinned terrifyingly and vanished the birds. Pettigrew drew a sharp breath, hoping desperately that that was the end. Foolish little man.

Another quick flick of his wand took care of the silencing charm. Then Harry cocked his head towards Sirius.

"Here, Black," he said, smirking as Pettigrew flinched back at the sound of the name, "you have however long _you want _to play with your _friend_, just don't kill him." His eyes remained on the cowering form on Pettigrew until the last bit, where he looked directly, pointedly, at Sirius, throwing him a wand.

Harry then transfigured a sorry example of a stool into a high backed cushioned chair. When he sat on it he was thrown into a deep shadow. He crossed one leg over the other, steepled his arms and waited for the fun to begin.

He watched as Sirius looked at the wand in happiness, and then in awe as it accepted him as its new master. Harry quirked an eyebrow, he'd stolen that wand from an unsuspecting wizard during a Hogsmeade weekend. The chances of it being even a decent wand for Sirius were slim, for it to actually accept him were a million to one.

He let Sirius get used to the weight and feel of the wand for a moment, wondering idly whether his other self had finished the second task yet. Another part wondered what the second task actually was.

Harry looked up when he heard a definitive hissing coming from the rafters, his eyes locked onto the muddy brown scales that flashed in and out of view between the beams. He glanced at Sirius again, confirming that the man was absorbed enough in the wand and the things he could do to Pettigrew with it before speaking.

_~Rasp, I did not expect you here. The dog doesn't know that I am a Speaker, I would prefer it to remain that way,~ _his hisses were barely whispers, but he knew full well that Rasp would hear every word as if he had been shouting, just as Harry heard the reply.

_~I have been waiting to see this for a very long time hatchling, I would not miss it! Chiana will mind-speak with you once your other self returns to your bed. Show me what you've learnt.~_

The snake positioned itself as to get the best view directly above Harry's head, also in shadow and so well camouflaged that he may as well not have been there. Harry knew he wasn't expected to reply. One more look at Sirius and he knew the man was prepared for what came next. He stifled a laugh when he saw that Pettigrew seemed to be suffocating on the tension in the room.

Harry released the magic that had fabricated the box.

* * *

**A/N **hmm... hope you liked it! The real violence will start in the next chapter... heheheh. In case you were wondering, Harry's double will be able to carry out normal everyday tasks. Also, they don't share a mind link, they functon as two separate people, but with the same personalities and ultimate goals if that makes sense? One particular set of reviews made me very happy recently... despite being threatened with a pillow to the head! ;) which is what drove me to finish this chapter off! So THANK YOU VERY MUCH!

apisci


	9. 8 Oops

**A/N **So.. well.. it's been a while right? Sorry it's been so long in the making! I kinda freaked out when I saw my exam timetable and just felt guilty whenever I was working on this instead of revision... please don't kill me! Well, some fun stuff happens in this chapter so.. here you go!

**Disclaimer: **I do NOT own Harry Potter! (no one noticed my fingers were crossed, right?)

***Warnings* **Brutal bloody torture, it's not too bad until Harry starts at it, you can probably skip it (I've starred around the bit you can miss)

_~Parseltongue~_

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**8. Oops...**

He wasn't expecting much. Mostly, Harry just wanted to see how far Sirius would go, to see if he would show any truly dark tendencies that may be just lurking underneath the surface.

Harry was usually the observer; he was _used _to sitting back and watching. In fact, it was usually what he preferred to do, rather than acting. It had always helped that Chiana and Rasp had agreed with his preference, as it was all the better for understanding others whilst not revealing yourself.

But this time, _this _time it was different.

He didn't want to see Pettigrew scream, he wanted to be the one to do it. He swiftly curbed the thought, reminding himself of the purpose of this exercise. Observing Sirius.

Half and hour in, and he was pleasantly surprised with Sirius' behaviour. Harry had expected him to be at least a bit hesitant, given his light orientated history. But it seems that he had been suppressing his darker nature within himself since he had met James Potter.

He watched from his shadowed chair as Sirius circled Pettigrew, much like he would if both men had been in their animagus forms. The traitor was no longer confined to his box like prison, but the room was heavily warded in its absence. There would be no escape.

"Peter," Sirius called softly, the heap on the floor gave an involuntary shudder.

"It's rude not to look," he continued in a sweet voice, "when someone's talking to you."

Peter chanced a glance upwards, but was immediately set upon by clawing hands, grabbing his shirt collar and dragging him to his feet, pulling his body up so his toes were scrabbling for purchase on the floor beneath him. The acrid smell of urine assaulted Harry's nose, which wrinkled with the appropriate amount of disgust. Sirius' face contorted and he snorted through his hypersensitive nose, making him look even more wretched and terrifying than it had done before.

"Especially when that someone was the man you framed for mass murder and nearly guaranteed a life of misery in Azkaban," Sirius' voice had gone quiet, dangerous and angry, eliciting a whine from Pettigrew and for his eyes to widen in terror.

"I-please! James wouldn't have wanted this, LILY wouldn't have wanted this! L-let an old friend go! Please don't hurt me!" Harry had a hard time making sense of Pettigrew's mumblings; he wondered if any of this might affect Sirius, who had been friends with him once, however long ago.

Obviously not, Sirius kept a blank face when he pushed Pettigrew harshly to the floor, Pettigrew met the ground hard, "not mention, best friend and godfather to the family you betrayed to the Dark Lord," the man paused, seemingly lost in thought, Pettigrew's next words were cut short, "traitors shouldn't be allowed the privilege of speech."

Harry shook his head slightly when Sirius looked at him beseechingly. No, he wanted Peter to scream, not drown because Sirius had cut out his tongue. Pettigrew had missed the exchange, Harry didn't even think that the terrified man had even noticed his presence.

Pettigrew tried to shrink as Sirius turned his full attention back towards him, hoping to save himself from his wrath.

"Crucio."

Well, that idea just went up in flames.

The little man started screaming before the spell had even landed. Harry closed his eyes to better appreciate the sound, whilst Sirius devoured the sight before him, eyes wide with glee. He was about ten seconds in when he cancelled the spell. Harry's eyes snapped open, half in irritation, half in curiosity.

"You betrayed them," Sirius accused.

Pettigrew lay twitching on the floor, but still managed to look up, terror coursing through his eyes, "He would have killed me, you don't know what He's like!"

"Then you should have let him, for you will suffer far more than death tonight," Sirius replied, "Crucio!"

Pettigrew screamed again, but this time Harry kept his eyes open, his hands gripped the armrests of his chair in an attempt to stop himself from leaping up to destroy the creature himself. He held himself back, for Sirius. The man had suffered thirteen years in wizarding hell because of that man, Sirius deserved his revenge, and Harry needed to watch Sirius exact it. He gripped the armrests harder.

Pettigrew's screaming stopped, he had less than a moment to recover before another cruciatus was sent his way. Harry couldn't take his attention off the man as Pettigrew's eyes rolled backwards into his skull and his back contorted to a ridiculous angle, almost breaking the bones.

When Sirius lifted the curse again, there were small beads of moisture on the man's forehead, and tear tracks down Pettigrew's grimy face.

"Ple-ase," the rat wheezed, throat raw from screaming, "stop – I'll... do.. an-anything."

Sirius obliged, a thoughtful looking gracing his features, "Anything?"

Pettigrew looked up hopefully, "Any-"

"Bring them back," Sirius growled, "you said anything, so: Bring. Them. Back."

Colour visibly drained from Pettigrew's face, so it was nearly the same shade as his hair. The watery mould colour of his eyes almost disappeared as his pupils dilated with fear.

"_Sectumsempra! Sectumsempra!" _he screamed at the man, each word was followed by a bright flash of light and a dull thump as each of Pettigrew's hands hit the floor, fallen from the stumps that were crossed protectively over his head.

Sirius grew calm again as he watched the blood pour out of Pettigrew's arms to pool at his knees in a perfect circle of red. Pettigrew himself had only eyes for the stumps that had once extended into his hands, his face morphing from one of fear into one of pain and disbelief.

"One for Lily and one for James," Sirius informed him calmly, "they shall be glad to know that no one else can suffer at your traitorous hands."

The words had settled nicely into the room by the time that Pettigrew found enough of his mind to wail and crawl towards Sirius, bloodied stumps extended. Unfortunately for him, he was not in his own mind enough to notice the pool of blood beneath him, and when he slipped in it he, naturally, extended both arms to catch himself.

The resulting scream was delectable, but it was cut short as Pettigrew passed out.

Sirius didn't even look at Harry, snapping himself out of his trance like state and casting an _incendio_ at both of Pettigrew's forearms, then dispelling the flames. The method was primitive, especially for a wizard, but the veins were cauterized. Pettigrew would not be dying of blood loss.

"_Auguamenti_."

The man came back around with a splutter. Confusion and suspicion turning to pain and fear in a matter of seconds. He looked up to see the statuesque visage of Sirius towering over him, raising his wand for another spell.

"Sirius."

Harry had had enough. To him, his voice had come out tight with the effort of restraint he was putting himself through, but he hoped it came across more sharp and commanding. Sirius had frozen in place, unwilling to go directly against a command from a person to whom he had placed his full allegiance, but wanting to hurt Peter more all the same.

"You have had an hour to play with your friend," at this Sirius lowered his wand, tucking it just inside his robes and watching with an amused expression as Pettigrew frantically searched the room for the menacing voice, "would you be kind enough to let me have a go to?"

Sirius hadn't expected the last sentence to be voiced directly behind him. He took one step to his left, revealing Harry, and then twirled around to face and incline his head to him.

"Of course, it would only be fair," Sirius didn't mind really, his bloodlust had been mostly fulfilled, and he had no doubt that Harry would do a far better job torturing Pettigrew then he could ever do. He then took a further step backwards, giving Harry room to step forwards into the light.

"J-James?" he asked tentatively. Sirius stiffened where he stood.

Harry smiled, in any other situation, it would have been reassuring, but here, it made him look feral, demonic. His midnight black hair contrasted with his dancing emerald eyes and brilliantly white teeth.

"Close, but not quite," he replied, still with the smile on his face, "James Potter was my father. I'm his son, Harry Potter. And I believe _you _are the reason why my life has been so unpleasant." Harry stood then, turning his back to Pettigrew as he lovingly drew his wand, twirling it between his fingers and caressing the polished holly. Watching helplessly was the only thing the man on the floor could do.

"I'm here to thank you for it. After all," Harry turned his head towards Pettigrew, another terrifying grin on his face, "you reap what you sow".

Pettigrew started mumbling rapidly, sometimes the words 'please' or 'stop' or 'forgive me' were said loudly and clearly enough to be understood.

Harry looked down at the figure appraisingly, "Sirius was right you know, traitors shouldn't be allowed the privilege of speech."

Pettigrew's mouth closed with an audible click.

"Ahh... much better," Harry said, making a show of closing his eyes and enjoying the silence, "but silence won't be enough to save you."

xx

A whispered spell later had Pettigrew hanging from the ceiling, arms tied together behind him, the rope joining them together disappeared upwards into the rafters, Peter's feet could just about touch the ground, but he had to stretch a lot to get there.

Harry smiled, "at first you think to yourself, '_I can hold myself up forever,' _but your arms _will_ grow tired, especially given their condition, and you will try to support yourself on your feet. But your toes can only just touch the ground, and so you will hang in agony."

Peter let out a horrible wail, his feet were desperately scrabbling for purchase against the floor that was tantalisingly within touching distance, but Harry was right, he couldn't support himself there. But it was far less painful than supporting himself using his handless arms, so he hung. His earlier shuffling had caused him to swing from side to side; as he accelerated to his original position he could feel the weight of his body pulling him downwards, the strain on his arms was unbelievable and he could _hear _the slow grinding sound caused by his shoulder bone rubbing against the socket.

"Now, it really would be far too easy to let you just hang there wouldn't it?" Harry asked lightly, as if he were talking to a small child.

Pettigrew was now sobbing pathetically, pleading to be let down, for Harry not to hurt him anymore. Harry ignored it all in favour of casting an ingrown toenail hex. This elicited a shriek from Pettigrew, who now had blood dripping from his toenails onto the floor, making it even harder to find purchase with his feet.

"When, in about an hour, your feet are actually able to support you on the ground, it will not be because the rope has extended, but because your shoulders would have been completely deformed by your body weight," Harry went on, seemingly oblivious to Pettigrew's pain, "and that is a theory I will test."

Harry took a step back to admire his work. He noticed Sirius looking on with an expression of slight horror on his face, one that was mixed with awe and pleasure of course. He also noted Rasp's presence in the rafters, all he could see was one beady unblinking eye staring down at him. Harry gritted his teeth, he would do Rasp proud, if the snake could ever feel that way.

He pointed his wand at Pettigrew again, casting another ingrown toenail hex, but this time he altered it so that it would affect his hair instead. Harry hadn't thought it possible, but Pettigrew shrieked louder than had had done before, Harry smiled, it was probably akin to the Cruciatus turned physical. He uttered a spell to make the hair grow about a centimetre inwards, causing Pettigrew to open his mouth in a silent scream, before enlarging each one to the size of a tooth pick and ripping them all out antagonisingly slowly. Every single hair from Pettigrew's body was now gone, each one pulling a pinhead's worth of flesh with it, they all dropped to the floor in a shaggy mess, which Harry promptly set fire to.

Pettigrew feebly tried to lift his legs up to avoid the flames that licked at his toes, whimpering as the movement caused his body to rotate and face the flames full on. Harry was reminded of spit roast.

Blood seeped out of each hole where a hair used to be, becoming small red dots that grew and eventually covered Pettigrew's skin like a second skin.

The flames were beginning to die out when Harry heard a sharp voice in his head.

_xx_

_~We are done with the second task master! We are returning to the tower!~ _Harry paused and quickly followed his mind link with the snake to see through her eyes, she was looking through a small peep hole in Harry two's robes, they were walking away from what seemed to be the lake side with the rest of Hogwarts ahead of them.

_~Good, I shall be back within the hour,~ _he replied before closing off his mind.

Harry would reflect later on, he knew he would, that perhaps it was unwise to let your mind drift off to another place when torturing one of Voldemort's followers. He would also reflect upon the fact that he hadn't chosen one of the best protected buildings to indulge in such activities, nor had he taken all the precautions that he could perhaps have taken. But that was for later.

His eyes were beginning to refocus in his own body when he noticed something was wrong. He had learnt that the first second or so after using Chiana's senses was much like being submerged in icy water, idly, some subconscious part of his mind wondered if that would ever change.

After a second sensation passed and sound and sight and smell came roaring back to him. Pettigrew was lying, stupefied, on the floor. The small wounds on his body had been healed, and the rope binding him to the ceiling, cut. In about his eleven o'clock, a lean-built man was standing, wearing a faceless white mask and entirely black robes, at his nine o'clock stood Sirius, wand out, panting heavily and obviously furious.

It had taken a quarter of a second for Harry to process this and draw his wand, pointing it unwaveringly at the attacker.

The masked man sent a dark purple light Harry's way, he ducked under it and wordlessly fired a blasting hex to accompany whatever Sirius had cast. The attacker threw up a shield charm and sprinting towards the unconscious form of Pettigrew, not once pausing in his spell casting. Harry avoided most of them, sending back ones of his own in quick succession: blasting, cutting, blasting, cutting.

The figured paused and cast a shield charm that absorbed all their spells and crouched low over Pettigrew. The masked faced turned to look up at him and there was silence as both parties calculated their next move, or rather, Harry and Sirius did.

The masked man used the time to say just three words, "We need him."

_'Death eater!' _screamed Harry's mind, finally realising the masked man's intent when he placed his hand on Pettigrew's arm.

"Avada Kedavra!" screamed Harry, aiming for Pettigrew.

But it was too late, both the masked man and the attacker had disappeared with a resounding crack.

All Harry could do was stare at the spot where they vanished.

x ~ x ~ x

~_You let them get away,~ _Rasp was less than impressed.

_~I did not _let_ them get away,~ _Harry said defensively, he felt it was a fair comment, he hadn't just handed Pettigrew over after all.

_~But away they went,~_

This time, Harry growled, _~I was caught off guard.~_

_~You let yourself be caught off guard,~ _Rasp hissed back.

As he had predicted he would, Harry once again thought on his foolishness, he had been far too hasty. And perhaps not as thorough in his own training as he had let himself believe. He remembered again the apparent ease with which that lone death eater had outwitted both him and Sirius.

_~He was _good_,~_ he said quietly,_ ~whoever he was, he was good.~_

Rasp turned a critical eye his way, _~then you need more duelling practice._~

Harry very nearly snorted, _~and who exactly will fill the role of my duelling partner?~ _

_~That is for you to work out,~ _Rasp said, before slithering off in his usual manner.

Harry and Rasp had headed straight for the room of requirement to meet with Harry Two and Chiana, reaching through the relatively new bond to Chiana, telling her of the new meeting place. Now, Harry, Harry Two and Chiana were left in contemplative silence.

Harry barely refrained from groaning, wanting nothing more than to cast a freezing charm at the retreating serpentine form, not that he wasn't used to Rasp giving him an idea but not any type of plan to follow through with.

"Malfoy."

Harry looked up, "Beg pardon?" he asked, surprised.

Harry two rolled his eyes, it looked better in real life rather than in a mirror, Harry noted.

"Perhaps you should just reabsorb me and see," Harry two said, offering his arm. Harry looked at him quizzically, but then supposed that maybe it would be just a little too paranoid of him to ask why.

He took the offered arm, locating the slightly raised skin at the base of his doppelganger's thumb, the only indication that it wasn't Harry himself. He pressed his nail against the mark, feeling the skin tear and then a strange sensation as he reabsorbed his ganger. He could just about compare it to being drenched by a spray hose, just without the water. He shuddered as a flood of new memories invaded his mindscape.

He opened his eyes and looked at Chiana _~Guard me,~ _he said, knowing that the precaution probably wasn't necessary, considering the location. Probably. But Harry's preferred option was to deal with absolutes, and having Chiana watch over him would absolutely ensure his safety.

He nodded in gratitude when Chiana agreed before diving back into his own mind, stopping by his forest for a second to admire it once again before shifting into the chamber. He was pleased, but not at all surprised, when he discovered that all of his ganger's memories were somewhat neatly organised into a cauldron crafted from what looked like a solid gold hydra just to the right of Salazar's face.

Harry watched the memories with little real interest, pleased that he had come in third and a little surprised when Beauxbaton's champion hadn't managed to retrieve her sister, whom teachers had rescued as soon as Harry, being the last, had resurfaced. Luna had been his 'treasure,' which Harry had quirked a lip at, realising the true purpose of the Yule Ball. One important thing he did notice was the intense stare that Malfoy was giving his memory, to his credit, Malfoy's face was completely unreadable, until... just there. A small, and baffling, nod when he made eye contact with his memory. Nothing else came of it though, and before he knew it, Harry was talking with himself and shortly found himself back in the chamber.

He reclined back into a plush armchair that appeared behind him, thinking that perhaps his other self had been thinking along the right lines. Harry frowned, before deciding to ignore just how strange that had sounded. He opened his eyes slowly to find Chiana gazing directly at him.

_~Draco Malfoy huh?~ _he murmured. Chiana just blinked back at him, Harry tried a different tact, _~I feel wary about this,~ _he admitted, _~Is Malfoy to be trusted with the knowledge of what I am?~_

Chiana blinked at him again, probably unaware of what Harry had just told her. He petted her scales fondly; she always had been the stranger of the two.

_~He has a good scent,~ _she said quite suddenly, causing Harry's hand to twitch a minuscule amount. He was about to reply when she hissed _~mouse!~ _and sprang from his hand, lightning fast. Harry fancied that he heard a small squeak a second before Chiana started hissing taunts at her unfortunate victim. Harry allowed himself an amused chuckle that quickly turned into a yawn and he noted how still his muscles were from being immobile for so long.

He was a little surprise that Chiana had remembered Malfoy's 'smell' at all, if that had indeed been who she was talking about. Chiana was too engrossed with gorging herself for Harry to be able to question her about it though, so he took it as a sign to begin winning him over, and found himself outright grinning when Chiana slithered back up to him with a tail hanging from the corner of her mouth.

He thanked the stars that he hadn't been placed in Gryffindor.

x ~ x ~ x

Harry had spent the past week studying the Malfoy heir, despite his snap decision a week ago; he had yet to approach the other boy. Not that Malfoy was making it easy for him.

The past week he had spent studying Draco had taught him that the blonde was hardly ever alone. When he wasn't in lessons, he was with Zabini, or Parkinson, or Davis, or Greengrass, Harry had even seen him talking quite a few times with Antony Goldstein! And as if that wasn't enough, he was followed nearly everywhere by Crabbe and Goyle, who Harry was eighty per cent sure that he had hired as bodyguards. It also made Harry wonder if Draco could keep his fairly hefty secret.

Harry was in the room of requirement again, glaring at a seventh year ancient runes textbook. Luna was sat opposite him, reading a book on some obscure spell creation.

He had been surprised when, the night after the second task, Luna had found and sat in the room of requirement with him. He had raised an eyebrow when she had sat down opposite him, she had replied with a noncommittal shrug and pulled out a copy of the Quibbler. Despite the many hours they had spent in each other's company during the past week, they had yet to exchange a word.

"You've read that book before," she pointed out quietly, eyes darting from side to side at a rapid rate. It made Harry wonder if she read an entire book a day, or just until she got bored, she always appeared with something new each day. The statement made Harry look down at his own book again, mildly annoyed that she was partially right; partially because he hadn't actually read a word of it.

He looked up again. Luna had paused in her reading, her pale blue eyes watching him sharply and, even though their eyes were completely different, he was reminded of Rasp. Luna didn't need to speak for him to understand her message. _Tell me._ He could feel Chiana entering his mind and he lowered his defences enough so she could look through his eyes.

"Draco Malfoy," he said softly, noting the subtle way her jaw clenched while the rest of her face remained impassive. Interesting.

"Top of every class," she said after a moment, "as long as it's not with Hermione Granger," she smirked, the expression making her look like a totally different person.

Harry waited a moment longer, what Luna had said was common knowledge after all. The silence stretched and Luna went back to reading her book. Harry continued to openly study her, a vague idea forming in the back of his mind.

"And yourself?" he asked in a conversational tone.

"Seventh," she answered, deadpanning, "but you and I are very much alike in that respect."

Harry curled one side of his mouth when he saw Luna giving him a small smile. He snapped his book shut and placed it on the arm of his chair, standing himself up half a second later.

"Duel with me?" he asked nonchalantly, leaning very slightly forwards and cocking his head in a half bow. He was gratified to see a quick flash of surprise in her eyes before she also closed her book and stood up. Suddenly the room was Spartan with nothing breakable in sight and the only splash of colour were the two chairs they had previously been sat in.

Harry was still standing in his half bow as Luna bemusedly returned it before non-verbally firing off her first spell. Harry's eyes widened fractionally and he sidestepped just in time to avoid the garishly bright orange spell aimed his way. He quickly returned one of his own, cursing at it hit the wall behind Luna. Then he was a bit unsure of what to do, listing all the spells he could fire at Luna in his head, and trying to pick out the best one to use that he forgot to look around and was very nearly too late to block a purplish spell aimed at his head. He finally found a spell, aiming it at a point just beyond Luna's left ear, the yellow spell found its mark and released a sharp noise, loud enough to make Harry wince on the other side of the room, cursing as he remembered that the caster was supposed to shield themselves beforehand. It was safe to say that Luna had fared worse though, if the way she was clutching her head was anything to go by, but Harry had missed his chance whilst berating himself and Luna had cast another purple spell at him. He sidestepped again and sent off another noise spell, aiming for the other side of Luna's head. This time he remembered to protect himself, but so did Luna.

She cast some sort of hex his way and it took him a moment to realise that she hadn't been aiming at him. He dived quickly out of the way, the motion seemed to surprise Luna, and this time Harry didn't waste the opportunity, silently casting _expelliarmus _and _petrificus totalus _in the same heartbeat. It wouldn't do to hurt possibly his only ally after all.

He suddenly let out the breath he hadn't realised he'd been holding in. The weight of Luna's wand in his hand didn't feel as satisfying as he thought it probably would have been, neither was seeing Luna, frozen, on the stone floor.

_~Because both you and she were about as dangerous as newborn mice,~ _Chiana stated reprovingly.

"_Finite incantatem,_" Harry watched as Luna shakily got to her feet. He couldn't help but agree with her.

"That was... humbling," Luna said between breaths. Harry cocked his head, it had been _embarrassing_, and it made him want to seek out Malfoy for help even less.

_~You can't pretend this problem doesn't exist! And you can't fix it by looking at those dead trees either,~ _Chiana pointed out.

Harry couldn't help a thin smile, knowing the truth when he heard it, Draco Malfoy would be essential.

"I thought you would be better, given your track record," to which Harry raised an eyebrow, "as the boy who lived, not to mention Hogwart's champion."

"The first, I very much doubt had anything to do with my duelling abilities, and I had time to prepare for both challenges, and it would be even more embarrassing to be on par with a Grindylow," he replied to the unspoken question.

"My father would disagree, he nearly lost his arm to a Grindylow," Luna said with a hint of a smile. Harry let out a small chuckle at the image and when he heard Luna outright laughing, he followed suit.

Besides, Luna may have just given him his answer to his little blonde problem.

* * *

**A/N **soo... can anyone see what's going to happen next? I can see how some people might be getting a little impatient for a certain dark lord, so the next chapter should cover quite a bit of time so expect an appearance at around chapter 10 (this one is EIGHT). :)

I'm really happy to still be receiving reviews (even after this long period of radio silence) and I feel like a proper writer now I've hit the 100 mark! I love you guys! :D

apisci


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